The Lightning Child
by Richan MMI
Summary: A mysterious boy lands in the middle of a Quidditch game as Potter and Malfoy battle it out. Why is he here? And why is Voldemort so interested in him not to mention all of Hogwarts? A little SSHP.
1. Part 1

The Lightning Child

By Richan

Disclaimer: Don't own nothing but my computer and car. I need the car for work. I need the computer to live. You can have all my student loans, though. I'm tired of paying them. Don't own my house. It's the bank's.

Warning: Slash ahead! A tiny bit of violence and cussing

Pairing: I would be giving things away if I said it, but since this takes place in the time of the Marauder's, it's safe to say James/Lily – or is it? Everyone else is up for grabs (and if I had my way, I'd take Remus... *rubs hands together gleefully*)

AN: I know I should be working on The Revolution of Light and any number of stories I've got started or going, but I was waiting for the verdict on it from my beta-reader when this idea just popped into my head. Admittedly, it was actually a plot-bunny that decided it was tired of waiting, since it took residence in my brain after going to my cousin's football game last fall, just after he kicked a 40-yard field goal - as well two 50-yard goals in practice earlier that week (yes I remember that – my cousin is a *good* football player!!!!!! And it was videotaped :P), so I'm not sure if it's entirely sane or not after all that euphoria, but it finally pushed its way through to my fingers (and keyboard). Anyways... please let me know if I need help (Not mentally - I already know I'm quite insane, thank you) in writing this story, ie, plot wise or grammar, since my beta/sister is gone for the week at a conference for work.

Enough with my rambling....

Chapter One

  Thunder crackled through the sky as the Quidditch game continued. Spectators and players alike were having trouble distinguishing anyone against the pitch-black sky, lighted only by the power of magic and the electrical rushes of lightning. The game was already bad enough without the storm that had suddenly appeared. Gryffindor versus Slytherin always turned into brutal games, with at least one player having to stay in the hospital wing for longer than a day, even with the best treatment that Madam Pomfrey could give. Malfoy and Potter were madly dashing through the onslaught of rain, desperately searching for the ball they were looking for.

  The girl announcing the game could barely be heard over the storm, the megaphone that she spoke through useless against the wind that blew violently across the pitch.

  All of Hogwarts were startled, then, when a deafening thunderclap sounded just as lightning hit the exact center of the pitch, blinding all there for a couple of seconds. When they opened their eyes, a collective gasp rose.

  At the exact spot where the Snitch is released lay a charred body, smoke rising from it where the rain was hitting it.

  Dumbledore rose as silence fell over the pitch, the lightning and thunder mysteriously vanishing from the area, the sky slowly fading to a misty gray as the rain let up. Walking quickly to the center of the pitch, the players hovering quietly nearby, he bent over and checked the body. "Poppy!"

  Potter watched as the nurse hurried over to the Headmaster, from which she quickly emerged from a conference and conjured a stretcher, carefully lifting the body onto it. He was tempted to watch were she was going, but the arrested look on Dumbledore's face kept his eyes trained on him.

  "Students and faculty, I am sorry to say that this game must be called off - " He was cut off by the groans of all the students, who had been eagerly awaiting the outcome of the first game of the season. The headmaster held up a hand, requesting silence. "Please, prefects, make sure that all students head back to their dorms. Mr. Potter and Miss Evans, please stay here. Quietus."

  James Potter lowered his broom to the pitch next to Dumbledore as several staff members joined them.

  "Albus, what is this about?" asked Professor McGonagall.

  "Whoever sent that boy used very powerful Dark magic. I do not want to take the chance that it could be used against any of the students," the headmaster answered.

  "What about... him?" asked Lily Evans as she stopped next to James.

  "He's alive," Dumbledore said in a soft voice. "Barely, but Poppy may be able to fix him up. The magic that was used on him was very powerful."

  "What was it?" asked Professor Flitwick.

  "Verbannen. The old banishing curse."

******

  James hurried up the stairs to Gryffindor tower. He was exhausted, the duties that Dumbledore had assigned him taking much longer than he thought they would. Lily had been sent back to the tower almost an hour ago. Wondering if she had escaped the mob that was sure to be surrounding her, he gave the password to the Fat Lady and crawled through the entrance.

  Silence met him, slightly unnerving him for a moment as he realized that every single Gryffindor was watching him.

  "James!"

  Never more than that moment was James grateful for Sirius. His best friend could be counted on to get him out of tight places, knowing that James would do the same for him.

  "Hey, Padfoot!" James turned around and made sure that the portrait was closed. "I don't have much to tell," he announced to the common room. "Dumbledore said that we would have to stay here until some people from the Ministry come to check that guy out."

  "Is he alive?" Remus asked as he came over to James from their usual couch.

  James nodded. "Madam Pomfrey's been working on him all day. Dumbledore said that whatever brought him here was very powerful."

  About twenty people tried to ask questions all at the same time.

  "Shut up!"

  The common room was shocked. James Potter rarely ever yelled, and he was pretty much a polite person when wanting things quiet.

  "I don't have any more answers. I have to wait just as long as you for my questions to get answered," James said in a quiet voice. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to go to bed."

  He walked quickly up the stairs, hurrying up to his bed. Tossing his shoes and Quidditch robes aside, he lay down on his bed and was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

******

  A groan startled him from the blackness he had been hovering in. A rustling close to his ear quickly followed the sound.

  "Hello?"

  The voice sounded familiar, but the gentle lilt to it soothed him as he realized he ached all over. Cracking an eye open, he quickly shut it against the bright light that assaulted him.

  Another rustle, this time a bit further from the first, sounded.

  "Open your eyes, now," the voice said. "I've taken care of the light. It won't hurt you, now."

  Obeying the soft words, he opened his eye again, his blurry vision slowly focusing on the face a foot away from his.

  "My, what pretty green eyes you have, child," the voice said.

  His disjointed thoughts put the voice and face together as being the same person, the familiar feeling coming back to him. Opening the other eye, he focused on the woman again.

  "Wha - ?"

  The cracked sound seemed to be coming from his own throat, making his jump and then wishing he hadn't. Another groan issued forth, telling him that he had been the one to make the same sound that had woken him as his head threatened to split wide open at the movement.

  "Shh," the woman whispered. She reached over to a table he hadn't seen before and brought a glass of water to his lips. "Don't talk, just drink."

  The cool liquid rushed through his mouth, taking the burning sensation of his throat down a couple of notches. Closing his eyes in bliss, he gulped the water greedily. The water was quickly gone, even as he wished the glass had been much larger.

  "I can't give you anymore for fifteen more minutes," the woman said. "I want to make sure you can keep that down."

  He didn't understand her reasoning, but shrugged it off. He knew that he wasn't up to making any demands, and as long as she got him the water in the time she stated he didn't mind.

  "Ah, our patient is awake?"

  The new voice sounded old to his ears. He understood that as he saw an elderly man walked through the parted curtains. The white beard and hair were very long, topped by an odd, pointed hat that made no sense to him.

  "Yes," the woman answered. "I was just about to call you down." She stood up and pulled the chair close by next to the bed. "Why don't you sit down while I get the medicines he'll need now that he's awake."

  The old man nodded. "Hello," he said in a friendly voice.

  He responded to the kindness he sensed laying underneath. "Hello." His voice was still cracked, making him wince inwardly. Something about it didn't sound right.

  "Please, let me introduce myself," the old man began, "I'm Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster here at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

  He wrinkled his nose at that. The words were very familiar, but just out of reach. He knew they were important, though.

  "And your name?" the headmaster asked.

  Opening his mouth, he stopped. What was his name? That, like all the rest of the thoughts since he had woken up, lay scattered behind something that was blocking them. Just one name popped up.

  "Harry."

  "Just Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

  Harry shrugged. "I'm not sure," he said in a quiet baritone, the edges becoming less sharp as the cracking in his voice faded. He rather liked the sound of it, knowing that it fit him better than the noises he had made earlier.

  Dumbledore reached over and patted him on the hand.

  He jumped back at the touch, knowing instinctively he did not like being touched without permission. "No!"

  The headmaster jumped back himself, startled at the reaction to his gesture. The twinkle that Harry had seen in his eyes had dimmed. "I'm sorry," Dumbledore said in a sincere voice. "I won't do that again if you feel uncomfortable about it."

  "I'm sorry," Harry apologized instinctively, a part of him wondering if he would be punished.

  "You have nothing to be sorry about, child." The headmaster stopped briefly as the woman came back through the curtains, several glass tubes and a goblet in her hands. "Ah, Madam Pomfrey! May I introduce Harry to you?"

  The woman smiled. "Hello, Harry," she said in her gentle voice. It turned brisk as she pulled a tube from the table where she had set all the others and poured half its contents into the goblet. "This is going to help you get your energy back. Your body took a fairly big hit, and this will help get you back up to speed."

  "Um..." Harry trailed off, eyeing the purple contents of the goblet once it was in his hands. "What hit?"

  The two people watching him looked surprised. "You - you don't remember?" the man asked.

  Harry shook his head and clutched it as pain shot through it. "How did I get here, and where is here?"


	2. Part 2

AN: Thanks to everyone who reviewed. It means a lot when I get comments and questions back on my writing. Besides helping me to see if everything really does work, it also helps boost my ego when it needs it the most – as in when I sit down to write the next chapter. (Well, in this case to continue the story. The first six chapters are already written, even if they are shorter than what I normally write.)

Chapter Two

  Dumbledore looked over the various people sitting in his office. Each of the Heads of Houses were here, as well as the Head Boy and Girl, along with a number of Ministry officials. He sent a smile to Poppy as she joined the group, a clutch of parchments in her hand.

  "Here they are, Albus," she said as she lay the parchments on his desk and took a seat next to Professor McGonagall.

  "This meeting," Dumbledore began, "is about the mysterious young man that arrived on our Quidditch pitch two days ago. Poppy has been looking after him. She took a picture of him so that we could see what he looks like when cleaned up."

  The nurse held up the photograph. The boy laying on the bed blushed as all those in the room looked at the picture.

  "He looks a lot like a cross between Mr Potter here and his friend Mr Black," Professor McGonagall said as she looked at the picture.

  "Those eyes, though," Professor Flitwick commented. He looked at the Head Girl sitting next to him as she looked over the picture. "They are like Miss Evans, here."

  The picture back to him, Dumbledore could see a kind of resemblance, but knew it to be impossible. James was the last of the Potters, and the eighteen year old didn't have any children. Still, the boy in the picture had the same facial structure as James, but didn't wear glasses. His black hair lay untamed down his back, reaching his waist. Green eyes that somehow looked haunted by events that the boy couldn't remember looked up at him before he shyly turned away from the scrutiny of the headmaster, the scar on his forehead highlighted by the afternoon sunlight from a nearby window.

  "Thank you, Poppy, for taking this. Now, please tell us the extent of Harry's injuries?"

  Poppy nodded. "His physical and magical reserves were hit pretty severely, whether it is from the curse that sent him to the middle of our Quidditch pitch or from the battle he was in before that."

  "Battle?" the Minister of Magic, Antonio Parks, asked as he sat up straighter in his chair. "There hasn't been a battle in quite a while."

  The nurse shook her head. "The wounds were quite recent, some of them still bleeding. Wherever he was, the battle looked to be fierce. Harry has several cracked ribs, as well as a concussion, fractured left femur, two broken fingers and both ankles are sprained."

  Everyone was silent as they processed this information.

  "What about his memory loss?" Dumbledore asked after a moment.

  "He can remember different spells, but he has no clue as to who he is other than the name Harry," Poppy replied.

  Dumbledore looked at the papers before handing them to the Minister. "He can do wandless magic?"

  Poppy nodded. "I found that he was quite able to conjure a glass of water after I told him that he couldn't have anymore for the night."

  James Potter snorted, obviously trying to hold back a laugh. The teachers eyed him with a serious look as the Ministry officials looked to the Minister.

  "He did this even with his magical reserves depleted?" Professor Handel, Head of Slytherin House, asked.

  "They aren't depleted," the nurse said. "They are low compared to what I found he should have, but even right now he has more power than I do at my best."

  Breaths were sucked in.

  "He is powerful, then," Dumbledore said in the grave silence that had fallen over the room.

  "Yes."

  "Then we should take him back to the Ministry and ask him about whether he works for You-Know-Who," the Deputy Minister, Cornelius Fudge said pompously.

  Minister Parks shook his head. "If he can't remember who he is, then questioning him on his involvement in this war is useless."

  Fudge eyed his superior before slouching in his chair. "What should we do, then?" he asked in a slightly sulky tone of voice.

  "Albus?" Parks asked as he looked over the parchment in his hand. "If I can get the agreement of the board of governors, will he be able to stay here as a student? From what Madam Pomfrey has found he is around seventeen or eighteen. That would put him in seventh year. As he knows some spells, it would be wise to teach him about them if he can't remember about his personal life. It may be hard for him to understand when to use, or not use, the spells."

  Dumbledore nodded in agreement. "That would be a wise idea." He turned to Poppy. "What were some of the spells he used?"

  "Several different summoning charms, as well as transfiguring a goblet into a mirror."

  "He did this wandless?" Professor McGonagall asked. "Most transfigurations can't be done without a wand, and certainly not a mirror."

  "He wanted to know what he looked like," Poppy stated.

  "Poor thing," Lily Evan's voice was quiet in the room, yet all of them heard her.

  "If he stays," James Potter began, "will he be sorted into one of the houses?"

  Dumbledore looked at the Heads of Houses. Seeing that they agreed he nodded. "As soon as he is well and the governors say that he can stay, he will be sorted."

******

  The meeting broken into a smaller group of Dumbledore and the Ministry officials, James and Lily walked slowly back to Gryffinor tower.

  "I wish Madam Pomfrey hadn't made us promise not to visit the infirmary," James said as the walked down the final hallway to the entrance. "I wanted to see what this Harry guy looks like."

  "Jamie, you'll see him in a couple of days. Madam Pomfrey said that he needed a lot of rest, and I highly doubt that with you around he won't get any."

  James faked a hurt look, but laughed when he saw mocking face Lily wore. "Sure, Lils," he said as he stopped at the portrait guarding the entrance to their common room. "I guess I can wait. I'm not sure Padfoot can, though."

  "I can't what?" a voice called as Lily gave the password.

  The Head Boy and Girl turned around to find Sirius Black and Remus Lupin standing a couple yards behind them. In their hands were various goodies from the kitchen.

  "Hey, Remy," Lily said as she slipped past the portrait.

  "I don't get a hello?" Sirius whined as he looked between his friends.

  James shook his head and grabbed some things from both Sirius and Remus' arms before they could drop anything. "I'm staying out of this one."

  Remus nodded his head. "Count me out as well."

  Sirius huffed as he struggled through the hole to the common room, refusing to drop any of the food in his arms. "I can tell I'm really loved around here."

  James straightened up and looked around the common room. "Where's Pete?"

  Sirius shrugged his shoulders.

  "He said that he was going to talk to Skye," Remus said as he sent the food in his arms down on their regular table.

  "Skye Gordon, Ravenclaw?" James asked.

  Sirius nodded. "I don't know what he sees in her. She's nasty enough to be in Slytherin."

  "Padfoot," Remus chided. "Not everyone in Slytherin's bad."

  "You're just saying that 'cause you have a crush on Snape."

  Sirius' comment hit the mark as a blush spread over Remus' cheeks, even as he vehemently denied it. "I do not! Severus /is/ nice."

  James watched as his two friends bantered easily as Sirius teased Remus about his feelings for the boy behind the top potions mark in their year. As he sat eating Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean, he wondered just who the boy in the hospital wing really was and where he had come from. He was so deep in thought that when Sirius suddenly slapped him on the back, he choked on the popcorn flavoured bean he had just stuck in his mouth.

  Gasping for air, he reached over and hit his friend, trying to hack up the bean at the same time.

  "Padfoot!" he got out once the bean lay in his hand. "Look what you did! Now I'll never be able to eat another one of these, since you almost killed me with it!"

  Sirius laughed at him as an indignant look crossed James' face. "Oh, I hope it wasn't your favorite flavour."

  "It was!"

  That stopped the other boy, his laughter suddenly falling silent. "It was?"

  "Yes!" James shouted, startling the other Gryffindors in the common room. "Popcorn," he said in a sad voice. "I'll never be able to think of it again without thinking of the friend that tried to kill me with it."

  A snort coming from Remus broke the tableau, cracking up James and Sirius.

  "So," Sirius began slyly once they had stopped laughing. "What was the meeting about? Was it about that guy from the game?"

  James nodded. "I can't tell you much more than that until Madam Pomfrey releases him from the infirmary, which should be in a couple of days. But it looks like he'll be a student here when he does."

  "Wicked," Sirius breathed. "So, what's his name?"

  "He doesn't know," James said, eyeing the rest of the beans that lay in front of him on the table.

  "He doesn't remember anything?" Remus asked as he opened one of the butterbeer bottles they had appropriated from the kitchen. "If he doesn't, how can we tell which side he's on?"

  James shrugged his shoulder. "We don't."

******

  Harry did not like the man that stood to his right. The partly balding man looked at him like he was some kind of criminal, or more accurately like a bug he was studying.

  He knew that he hadn't done anything wrong, or at least he thought he hadn't. Even if he couldn't remember his name - even though he was pretty sure his first name was Harry - or his birthday or his parents, he somehow knew if he would feel guilt if he had done something wrong. But, he was stuck with the pompous git...

  He could remember someone saying something like that, someone with red - bright red - hair. A friend, maybe?

  "Harry?"

  Dumbledore gave him a reassuring smile, the twinkle in his eyes relaxing Harry just a bit.

  "Sir?"

  "Minister Parks has asked the board of governors for the school if you would be allowed to become a student until we figure out just who you are. Would you like to do so?"

  Harry quickly thought about it. He had the feeling he had been in school, the indistinct murmuring of other students around him as he stirred something in front of him. He felt content here, as if it were home, and he didn't really want to leave it.

  "I'd like that," he answered. "But won't I need books?"

  Dumbledore smiled. "I will be getting them, and the governors have waived the fee for the moment as this is a special occurance."

  Harry gave a small half-smile. "Thank you, sir."

~*~

  Half an hour later, Madam Pomfrey pronounced him fit and ready for schooling. Professor Dumbledore came back into the infirmary, this time alone.

  "Now, Harry. At dinner tonight we will need to sort you. Once you are sorted into a house, it will be like your home. Hopefully you will be able to find some friends while we are working out the questions before us."

  Nodding, Harry looked down at the pyjamas he was wearing. "What about clothes, sir?"

  "I will take care of that as well, Harry."

  Harry opened his mouth to protest the expense.

  "No, Harry," Dumbledore said. "I have the feeling that you are special, and this is the least I can do to see you comfortable here."

  The headmaster rose and handed Harry a bundle that had been laying on the bed next to his. "These are for you to wear while we go to Diagon Alley to get you your things and a wand."

  "A wand?" Harry asked, a confused look in his green eyes. "Is that like that stick Madam Pomfrey was waving around?"

  Dumbledore chuckled at his description. This boy in front of him held more power than even he himself did and could do powerful magic without a wand. It would be interesting to see how he reacted when he got one.


	3. Part 3

Brief AN with another one at the bottom: I'm sorry for this taking so long, but I was without my computer for a week when it decided to crash, and no one else I know has a 100MB Zip drive, and this chapter was on such a disk.

Chapter Three

  Severus wished he had earplugs as Malfoy ranted in the Slytherin common room. The blond leader of the seventh years - excluding Severus - had been expounding for days what he would do to the man who had landed in the middle of "the best game of Quidditch in our seven years at this sorry excuse for a school." The black-haired youth was sure that the man hadn't intended on being there, judging by the way the soot and smoke had covered his body.

  Dumbledore hadn't said anything more about the man, but Severus knew that several people from the Ministry had been here to talk about it. He knew this because he had been talking to Professor Montrose about a potion when the summons to Dumbledore's office had arrived. The Head of Hufflepuff was showing Severus several different ways to brew one of the harder potions on the curriculum when the owl had flown through the window.

  When Montrose had come back, the man hadn't answered any of Severus' questions. Knowing that, he bided his time to find out just what was going on. The day after that he had gone over to the hospital wing to see what was going on, but hadn't seen anything before Madam Pomfrey shooed him out of the infirmary.

  _The man is in a private room_, Severus thought. That makes him one of three things: he's on the verge of dying, which was very possible judging by the state of him three days ago; he's a dangerous criminal who happened to break through all the wards surrounding the castle and they were keeping him here until they could find a safe way to transport him to the Ministry for a trial; or three, he'd be staying here.

  Malfoy's voice rose even higher and Severus winced inwardly. Deciding that he would get much studying done, he packed his bags and rose.

  "Where you going, Snape?" Goyle asked.

  One thin eyebrow lifted disdainfully. "Why should I tell you?"

  "Is the library your destination, Severus?" Malfoy asked, his attention switched momentarily. "Or are you going to try once more to find out who our visitor is?"

  Severus smiled thinly. "I believe that the books in the library hold more sway over my curiosity than some man dying in the hospital wing." Sending a look to Malfoy that said he would refuse to answer any more questions, he quietly left the dungeons.

  On his way, he made sure to take a path that would take him past the infirmary. Seeing nothing once more, he had just rounded the corner to the library when he heard the door to the infirmary open as Dumbledore talked.

  "We'll get you some things until we can get you into a house, Harry," the headmaster was saying.

  "Thank you, sir," a soft baritone answered him.

  Severus froze at the voice, the resonance of it sending a shiver down his spine. Swiftly turning around and pulling himself deeper into the shadows, he waited for the two to pass by where he was hiding. As they did, he had to hold in a gasp when he got a good look at the young man walking beside the headmaster.

  Long black hair, longer than even that prick Black's, swayed down his back in a mad tumble. It wasn't curly, but wasn't straight either. The messy hair framed his face, and more specifically his eyes. But what drew his attention was the oddly shaped scar on his forehead. The slightly puckered skin looked like it was in the shape of a lightning bolt. Thinking of how he arrived at Hogwarts, Severus found himself thinking it was appropriate.

  "I think you will like Diagon Alley, Harry. Before we go, we should hide that scar. Though it may help us find out who you are, we can keep it back for security."

  "That's fine, sir. Diagon Alley - what is there?" the soft voice asked as they walked out of earshot.

  'Harry.'

  Severus liked it. From the boy's stance, his name fit him very well. The tall, proud walk he used displayed an awesome power within him.

  Turning back around, he walked quickly to the library. At the spot he had claimed his first year here, Severus sat in the cushiony chair, not bothering to get out his books. He wouldn't be able to concentrate on them for a while. He'd just sit here and think about what he had seen before he would. If someone saw him, he could just say that had been thinking about a potion - no one bothered to ask beyond that.

******

  Sirius was practically bouncing in his seat next to James, and the last remaining Potter was, frankly, tired of it.

  "Padfoot, would you stop that?" he asked. "If you don't, I'll hex you into tomorrow."

  The other boy laughed off the threat. "I can't, Prongs. I just can't wait to see which house this Harry guy will be in."

  "A hairy guy?" Peter Pettigrew asked as he slid into his seat.

  "No, Pete," Lily corrected from the other side of James. "Sirius was talking about the boy they are going to be sorting before dinner."

  "Oh." The slightly overweight boy hadn't talked much about the rumors that had swiftly passed through the school when the headmaster and a strange boy had been seen entering the castle's main doors with several bags an hour before. Even before that, he had seemed disinterested in the entire subject of the mystery man who had interrupted the Quidditch match.

  Remus arrived, face slightly sweaty from the swift journey he'd had to make to Gryffindor tower before coming to dinner. "Is it going to be before dinner?" he asked as he sat down.

  James nodded as Dumbledore entered the room, a black-haired boy of about his age following him.

  The headmaster stopped at the stool perched in front of the teachers' table, the Sorting Hat sitting quietly on it. Dumbledore cast a beaming smile on the Great Hall. "Students, I would like to introduce a new student, Harry, to Hogwarts."

  The students clapped, James included, even though he thought it strange that Dumbledore didn't give a last name. Maybe they hadn't thought of one. Looking over at the Slytherin table to see what their reaction was, he caught sight of Snape, whose face held a strange look. He couldn't quite decipher what it was, so he turned back to the headmaster.

  The hall was startled when the hat didn't sing. James figured that it was because it hadn't been given enough time to make up a song. After all, it had all year to think of a new one for the Sorting at the beginning of the fall term.

  Holding the hat, Dumbledore motioned Harry to sit on the chair and positioned the hat on his head.

  The entire hall sat in silence for five entire minutes before any movement was seen from the hat.

  "I cannot Sort the Lightning Child. He belongs in all houses and in none."

  Shock rippled through the students. James saw the look of surprise on Dumbledore's face and the other professors.

  Harry took off the hat. "Sir?"

  The soft voice cut through all the noise, startling James again. He could hear raw power in that voice. It also sounded familiar, almost like his father's voice before Voldemort had killed him a year ago. He looked again at the confused boy who stood talking with Dumbledore in hushed conversation.

  He looked a lot like what he saw in the mirror, and at the same time he didn't. James wondered if he was a distant cousin, knowing that the Potter heritage ran very strong in their features.

  Dumbledore had finished talking to Harry.

  "Since our new student is unable to be sorted, for tonight I will place him at the Gryffindor table under the care of our Head Boy and Head Girl. I and your other professors will figure out how Harry will get his education."

  James stood up as Dumbledore pointed Harry in his direction. As he did, his blue eyes met brilliant green, a half-shade darker than Lily's. Hiding his confusion, he gave the boy walking towards him a welcoming smile. Holding out his hand, he said, "Hi, Harry. I'm James Potter."

******

  Harry watched the antics in the Gryffindor common room. After a confusing dinner, James and his friends had practically dragged him up to the tower where their dormitories were. All of them had been friendly but for one. The sandy-haired boy called Peter was chilly to him, a reaction he, and indeed James, hadn't understood.

  "What's the matter, Pete?" James had asked. "Don't you like Harry?"

  Peter had shrugged his shoulders. "I can't tell yet."

  Harry hadn't felt crushed, exactly. He had felt several emotions coming from the boy sitting across from him. In fact, he had felt more for being embarrassed by sitting between James and his girlfriend, Lily, than the slight anger directed at him by Peter.

  "Harry!" Sirius called to him, breaking his train of thought.

  "Yes, Sirius?" As he said the name, a picture flashed behind his eyes. It was a picture of a man like Sirius, but much older, probably twice his age, his face full of both grief and joy. Shaking off the brief glimpse, he smiled up at the other boy.

  "Can you ride a broom?"

  Harry frowned. He remembered walking by a shop that had held brooms in its front window. He'd had another flash of a memory, where he had been flying very fast, being chased by something or somebody. Shrugging his shoulders, he said, "I'm not sure. I could try tomorrow, though."

  Sirius grinned widely. "Yeah. Maybe Jamie-boy here can learn a couple of new tricks for the Quidditch rematch next Saturday."

  The word 'Quidditch' gave him a flash of red and gold and silver and green, but nothing as definite as the other pictures. From that, though, Harry knew that he had played it before. "Maybe," he said with a small smile.

~*~

  James held his breath at the smile on Harry's face. The boy did look like his father with that smile, the same one his father had given to James countless times. The pleased smile had been bestowed on James when he had brought his father pictures he had painted and his school scores and Quidditch game results. The smile made him ache for his father, just a little.

******

  Dumbledore smiled as he watched the students slowly file in for breakfast. It had taken he and the Heads of Houses nearly three hours to work out a schedule for Harry. The boy would be given his own room, separate from all four of the houses, but would be able to visit any of the common rooms.

  Once the other professors had left his office, he had tried to talk to the Sorting Hat about its refusal to Sort Harry. All the Hat had offered by way of explanation was that with the boy's memories hidden away, it would be too difficult to 'categorize' him. That particular phrase had stopped Dumbledore, who had quickly put the Hat back on its stool and went to sit back down in his chair. As he did, Fawkes left his perch, his bright red feathers gleaming in the bright candlelight and lamps that lit the headmaster's office. He had never thought of the Sorting as categorizing, but he knew now that some people were impossible to do so. The young man who had appeared out of lightning was one of them.

  Petting the phoenix, Dumbledore had sat deep into the night, thinking about the 'Lightning Child.'

To be continued...

AN: Thanks for all the reviews! This story is basically already written, and while I will try to incorporate suggestions, it may not fit in with the plot – and there is one, it just doesn't show up for another three chapters – so it won't go in. It doesn't mean that I don't appreciate them, though! And UPDATE! – yes, I will update, but please let me know what you really think of the story, and not just for me to update. I appreciate the sentiment, but I'd rather have the feedback!

Bianca – Nobody really knows what Harry's wand is like, including Dumbledore. It will show up later, but won't play a big part in anything for a while. The spell... I had already thought of that, but I've seen too many stories like that so I'm not going to put it in. I prefer to think that once a memory is hidden it stays that way. At least when it's naturally hidden. I think it comes from when Voldemort breaks the memory charm on Bertha Jorkins really solidified that when I read it over again. When he does so, he basically makes her a vegetable, so I don't see Dumbledore doing that just to find out who the Lightning Child is. And as for the slash pairing – that would be telling, wouldn't it? Let's just say it could be like some soap opera where there is a lot of crushing and disappointments.

candy-thedreamer – I try to make this original, but I don't think there is really a *true* original anywhere on this site. (I'm not saying that I haven't read any original plots, but since we're all using someone else's characters, it technically isn't true that something's original, never been thought of before.) I started this story more than eight months ago, before there was a large crop of time-travel fics, and I try to stay away from them while finishing this story – except Coexistance by cyan (and I highly recommend this since it does have an original plot to it). That way, I'm hoping that there are some twists to this story that are unique.

bookwrm580 – I've seen so many fics where Harry knows everything, so I decided to put a twist on it. Then to compound this problem, I decided to chuck him back to the time of his parents. I can't say if he will get his memory back or not, since it's an integral part of the plot, but I can tell you that some things will slip through his memories enough to make Lily wonder if he's a relative. ::coughcoughPetuniabeingb*tchycoughcough::

CastusAlbusCor – Yes on both counts!


	4. Part 4

AN: My apologies that it's taken almost two months for this chapter to come out, even though this story is finished. I have been battling a major bout of writer's block, and couldn't even stand to look over this story. I hope to get the rest of the chapters out one a day, but I don't guarantee it. Thanks to Acyla for catching the missing word.

Enjoy and thanks to everyone that reviewed!

Chapter Four

  Severus watched as Harry looked over his schedule. Potter and his friends were laughing and pointing at it. He could hear most of their conversation, most of which included bad-mouthing all Slytherins. Lupin didn't seem to like those remarks, and neither did Evans.

  Harry just gave them all looks. "I'd like to meet them before I take your word on it or not, thanks," he said, his voice cutting through the murmurs in the Great Hall.

  Severus watched as all the students turned to look at him, several wondering why he didn't just accept the truth as they saw it. He looked over and saw that Potter was smiling at him, Black had a look as dark as his surname, Lupin was surprised. He couldn't tell what Evan and Pettigrew's reactions were, since they were seated facing away from him, along with Harry.

  As he watched, Harry turned around in his seat and looked at the Slytherin table. Their eyes met, and Severus saw the green eyes widen slightly before the other boy hurriedly turned back around to look at his schedule. It wasn't until a minute later that he realized he had seen a faint tinge on Harry's cheeks as he had turned away.

  He'd have to think on that later, away from the rest of the Slytherins.

  Fifteen minutes later, Severus seated himself at his usual table in Transfigurations. He was glad that they didn't share this class with the Gryffindors, instead of the Ravenclaws. Pulling out his parchment, quill and inkpot, and book, he nearly jumped out of his seat at the soft voice to his right.

  "Is it all right if I sit here?"

  It was the mystery boy. 'Harry.' The boy with the voice that sent shivers down his spine. Good shivers. Ones that made him think things he shouldn't.

  Severus shot him a blank look, to which the other boy smiled. "Thanks," he said in that voice.

  Harry had just gotten his supplies organized when Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle walked through the door. Severus kept an eye on them without them noticing, watching as they approached his table.

  "Ah, Harry," Malfoy said in a snobbish voice. "Is that your real name?"

  Harry gave him a steady look, but didn't answer.

  Malfoy smirked, obviously under the impression that the boy sitting next to Severus was properly scared by the blond boy. Severus, though, could read tension in the body next to his.

  "I see you haven't quite learned who you should sit by, Harry. Snape, here, isn't worth it, and neither is that Muggle-lover Potter," Malfoy sneered. The blond held out his hand. "I can introduce you to the right kind of people around here."

  Severus noticed that the classroom was silent, including McGonagall, who sat in her animagus form at the corner of her desk. All of them wanted to see what Harry would say.

  Harry looked from the hand to the face that belonged to it, and Severus could see him weighing his options.

  "I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks," Harry replied, his voice slightly cooler than it had been.

  Malfoy's face darkened at the refusal. "You'll regret that, Harry. I'd be careful if I were you." He leaned over the desk threateningly.

  "Mr Malfoy, is there a problem?" McGonagall's voice came from behind the blond boy.

  The sneer turned into the facetious look Malfoy reserved for all the professors but Handel. "No, Professor."

  Severus looked at Harry, who seemed to have forgotten the incident already. As he did, he noticed that the scar he had seen yesterday afternoon had been covered up, now that he thought about what Dumbledore had been talking about.

  That would bear thinking about later, as well.

******

  James smiled as he saw Harry walk into the potions classroom. In the hallway he had been stopped by one of the Ravenclaw seventh years, who had been all too happy to tell about Harry's refusal of Malfoy's friendship. He was glad. The blond Slytherin was practically evil incarnate, second only to Voldemort.

  That made him frown as he wondered if anybody had bothered to tell Harry about the war going on outside of the school.

  "Hi, Harry," he said as the other boy stopped by his counter.

  "Hi, James. Can I talk to you after class?"

  James smiled at the question. Nodding, he asked, "did you want to sit with me?"

  Harry shook his head. "Severus asked me if I would sit by him and I said I would."

  "Severus?" James twisted in his seat to find Snape scowling at him before the look turned to one of confusion when his gaze landed on Harry. Now that was interesting. He wondered what Remus would make of this, since he'd been watching the Slytherin for quite a while.

  Harry nodded. "I don't think I'll feel comfortable sitting at the Slytherin table, either, so can I join you for lunch?"

  "Sure," James answered. He watched as Harry went and sat next to Snape, ignoring the childish taunts that were flying fast and furious from Malfoy and his gang.

  Professor Montrose strode in, throwing a silencing glance at the class. Hufflepuff's Head of House took nonsense from no one, even from his own house. James wondered if he learned that from McGonagall, or if the Transfiguration instructor had learned at the potions master's feet, although in the last couple of years he had gotten.... James didn't want to say 'mean,' but it certainly fit. Especially when he really had it in for himself and the other Marauders.

  "Today we are making a truth serum. Claritiserum, while not as powerful as Veritaserum, stops the creative process in the brain that allows lying to make it to the mouth. Claritiserum will not force the correct answer out of a person, but it will not allow them to be untruthful about it either. Please turn to page 577 for the correct recipe, and follow the instructions I have written on the board."

  James dug diligently into the potion, knowing that having Lily for a partner was a good thing. Every once in a while he threw a grin at her when he was sure Montrose wasn't looking. The professor tended to think such things as hormones were a sufficient enough distraction from potions to warrant points off and a suitably horrible detention to go with the loss.

  "Mr. No-last-name," Montrose said as James threw in the last ingredient.

  "Sir, it's just Harry," came the reply. James felt a chill run across his neck at the power in the voice. This was an implicit instruction to not say such a thing again.

  Montrose hummed, and James sincerely wished that he would overlook Harry's response.

  "I was hoping that one of the students would be willing to test the potion, and I think that person should be you."

  James quickly looked at Lily, a concerned frown on his lips. His girlfriend wore the same expression on her face. Looking over at his friends, he found the same looks. Whenever Montrose picked on a student to test a potion, it usually didn't turn out good. If he hadn't been sorted into Hufflepuff and then made their Head of House, James thought he should have been a Slytherin for the sadistic satisfaction the man seemed to get out of his job.

  "Very well, sir." Again the instruction in the voice was there.

  Montrose went to the front of the classroom, Harry right behind him. As they did, sympathetic looks from the Gryffindors in the room quickly left their faces as the professor turned to face the class.

  "One drop will last an hour. Today, though, I believe I will give you two."

  James narrowed his eyes. He didn't like this. At all.

  "What is he doing?" Lily asked under her breath, a worried note in her voice.

  "I don't know."

  After a minute's waiting for the potion to take affect, Montrose asked the first question.

  "What is your name?"

  "Harry." The voice was monotone, and James knew it should never sound like that.

  "And your last name?"

  "I don't know." Harry's face was pained, but Montrose wasn't looking.

  "Are you sure?"

  Harry didn't answer.

  "Are you sure, Mr. No-last-name?"

  Again Harry didn't answer the question. However, he did speak. "It is just Harry, sir. Do not call me that name again."

  "Is that a threat?"

  "No. It is a warning."

  Montrose smiled thinly. "A warning could be considered a threat, Mr. No-last-name."

  There was a soft pop from the front of the classroom, followed by a blinding light. When James could see again, he found Harry there, but not Professor Montrose.

  Ten seconds after that Professor Dumbledore was standing in the door of the classroom. "What happened?"

  "Professor Montrose..." Remus answered.

  Malfoy cut him off. "Harry here blew up the professor," he said in a loud voice, a malicious look of glee on his pointed face.

  "Harry? Is this true?" Dumbledore asked. James saw that he was torn between anger and amusement, which made him feel a little bit better about the trouble his new friend was sure to be in.

  "No. I did not blow up Professor Montrose," Harry answered.

  James was quite irritated by the monotonous voice. Shaking his head, he threw a swift glance around the room and found Snape's eyes glued to the front.

  "What did you do, Harry?"

  "I sent him back to his rooms."

  Dumbledore blinked, as did most of the other students.

  "Why?"

  "Because he was being rude to me. If he wants to act like a child, I will treat him thusly."

  A snicker escaped James, who brought up his hand as Dumbledore turned to face him as he avoided looking at the other Marauders. As he looked at James, he could see the twinkle in the headmaster's light blue eyes.

  "Very well, Harry. Would you please follow me and tell me how you did that?"

  Harry nodded. "Do I need to bring my bag?"

  "Yes," Dumbledore said.

  As the potion-influenced boy walked back to the counter he was sharing with Snape, James noticed that Harry's wand had been lying next to his quill the entire time. He also noticed that those watching the boy - everybody but Malfoy and his gang, who were snickering at the trouble Harry seemed to be in - saw that what Harry had done was wandless magic.

  Harry gave an apologetic smile to Severus, then turned to face James fully and gave him one as well. 'Talk to you later?' he mouthed at James.

  Nodding, James' eyes followed the other boy and the headmaster's forms out the door.

  "How'd he do that?" Sirius asked as the bell rang.

  No one had an answer.

******

  Harry felt a jolt as the staircase shifted and began to move up. While it didn't feel very good, it was better than climbing another set of stairs, at least more than the five they'd taken to get to the strange gargoyle that had been at the entrance of this staircase.

  He wasn't sure why the headmaster had called him up here. It may have something to do with the potions professor, but not entirely.

  Harry thought the man was rather rude, much like that Malfoy boy. At least the blond had chosen to do his insulting in an indirect form, which could be ignored; speaking as they were in such general terms it wasn't worth the bother. Professor Montrose, on the other hand, hadn't listened to the request Harry had about his name.

  Dumbledore opened the door to reveal a fuming Montrose.

  "I won't have him here, Albus! He obviously doesn't know that I am to be given respect!" The professor had stood up at their entrance, his face red against his white hair.

  "Minerva seemed to have no problem this morning, Evelyn," Dumbledore said, calmly.

  "I won't tolerate him!"

  Dumbledore simply smiled at him. "Please, gentlemen, have a seat."

  Harry slipped into the first chair he saw and looked up. On a perch behind the door was a beautiful bird, its red plumage shining in the late morning sunshine. He smiled at the sight and was surprised when the bird leapt off his perch and into the air, landing on Harry's lap.

~*~

  "Sir?"

  The headmaster smiled at the sight. The young man was obviously startled by Fawkes' new perch in his lap, but seemed content to let him stay. Indeed, Harry began to stroke the phoenix gently. The fire bird gave soft trills that began to fill the room.

  As he looked at the potions professor in the other chair, Dumbledore could see that the notes were draining the rage Montrose felt he was entitled to.

  "Now, Evelyn," he began. "Please tell me what happened in the classroom."

  The red began to creep up the other man's face. "This - this brat thought he could order me around!"

  Dumbledore sighed and looked at Harry, who was smiling softly at Fawkes, who seemed to be making a nest to lay in out of the boy's robes.

  "Harry? What happened?"

  The boy began to speak in a monotone voice only found with one of the truth serums. "Professor Montrose told us to make Claritiserum. Severus and I made it. The professor then called me Mr. No-last-name and I told him that my name is just Harry. Professor Montrose then said that I would be the student to test the potion. Once we got to the front of the room he gave me two drops and asked me what my name is. I told him Harry, and he asked me what the rest of my name is. I told him that I didn't know it.

  "Then he asked if I was sure and I didn't answer. I'm not entirely sure, sir, if I really do know my name, so I wasn't sure how to answer it. It's confusing with the glimpses I see, so I couldn't tell if it was true or not."

  "Then the potion was wrong and he was making it up!" Montrose interjected.

  "Evelyn," Dumbledore said. "You know as well as I that the potion only works between the brain and the mouth, not within the brain itself. It blocks the path for lying to the mouth. Only Veritaserum would be able to see the truth in a person's memories."

  Montrose slumped in his chair.

  "Please continue, Harry."

  Harry nodded. "Professor Montrose asked me again if I was sure, but he called me Mr. No-last-name again. I told him that my name is Harry and not to call me Mr. No-last-name again. He asked if I was threatening him and I said no, that I was warning him. The professor said that a warning could be considered a threat. Then he called me Mr. No-last-name again."

  "Then he somehow got me back to my rooms," Montrose said very loudly.

  "How did you do that, Harry?"

  The boy was quiet for a moment. "I just wanted him to go back to his rooms. He... reminded me of someone, and whenever I thought about this person's behavior and how he acted like a child, I got the impression that he needed to be sent to his rooms. So I did."

  Dumbledore sat back in his chair. "Remarkable."

  "Sir?"

  "Did you use a spell for this, Harry?" A shake of the head. "An incantation?" Another shake. "Where was your wand?"

  "On my desk, sir."

  The headmaster thought for a moment. "Very well, Harry. Why don't you head to lunch? Do you remember the way?"

  The boy nodded and slowly moved his legs. Fawkes lifted his head and looked at Dumbledore, seeming to remonstrate him for making the phoenix move.

  "Sir?" The voice sounded more like it normally did, adding another question to the book that had popped up about the boy, for two drops of the Claritiserum was supposed to last two hours and it was wearing off after thirty minutes. "What about.... Am I in trouble?"

  Dumbledore waved a hand at him. "Never mind about that, Harry. Go eat some lunch. Also, your new room is ready and all your things have been moved there. Here's the directions," he said as he handed Harry a piece of parchment.

  As soon as the door was shut behind the boy, Montrose jumped out of the chair. "Albus! Why aren't you punishing that boy?"

  "Evelyn, you know that you are to treat the students equally and definitely not as rude as you just did. We have talked about this before." Dumbledore paused as Montrose shrunk in his chair. "Harry told you several times not to call him that name, a request you would have honored if he had not been a student. This is not the first time I have heard complaints on your ignoring student requests about their names or personalities, Evelyn, in the past couple of years. You will stop it."

  Montrose looked up at Dumbledore. "Why are you doing this, Albus? I have spent my entire life teaching here, and I've never had problems before this year! Except with those seventh year Gryffindors," he muttered under his breath.

  "Evelyn, I know that Poppy has talked to you about stress. Your health problems are affecting how you are treating your students."

  Montrose stood. "I'm not going to listen anymore to this, Albus. Maybe when you have something to say of sense I will listen."

  Dumbledore sighed as the potions professor slammed the door behind him, heavy steps stomping down the moving staircase in an effort to get away quicker than normal. He turned to Fawkes, who was wearing a 'don't look at me' face.

  "I know, old friend. We just have to be patient."


	5. Part 5

Chapter Five

  Harry stopped just inside the doors to the Great Hall as everybody inside it turned to look at him. Startled, he looked over at the Slytherin table, trying to find Severus. The other boy had been a big help in Transfiguration, and he was very knowledgeable in Potions when Harry had questions for him. He didn't see him, though, even looking twice for the shoulder-length black hair Severus had.

  He walked over to the Gryffindor table, spying the auburn red of Lily's hair, knowing that James would be sitting next to her. As he got closer, he wondered why he knew that. Shrugging it off, since it wasn't quite a memory, he found the other boy and saw an empty space beside him.

  "Harry!"

  There was a loud chorus around him as James patted him on the back.

  "I see you survived!"

  Lily leaned around James. "Harry, how did you do that?"

  Shrugging his shoulders, Harry answered, "I'm not sure."

  He noticed Remus eyeing him. "You sound different. Is the Claritiserum still working?"

  Harry scrunched his eyebrows together as he thought. He hadn't noticed, but he didn't feel that strange compulsion at the back of his mouth. "I don't think so. Do you think I could lie?"

  Sirius laughed. "What's the capital of Scotland?"

  "Paris?" Harry nodded. "Yeah, I can lie now. I don't want to, though."

  "That's good," James said as he passed the pitcher of pumpkin juice to Harry. "Now, eat up, and if we hurry we can talk before our next class. What do you have?"

  Harry pulled the timetable out of his bag. "I have Arithmancy with the Ravenclaws. Advanced."

  "Whew!" Sirius said as he leaned over to look. "How'd you get placed in that class? Only the smartest students in Arithmancy get placed there. You are probably the first non-Ravenclaw in ten years to be there besides Remy, here."

  Harry wrinkled his nose when he saw the steak and kidney pie on his plate. Something deep inside him told him that he didn't like that particular dish. Reaching for a different bowl, he grabbed a dish of shepherd's pie. This was more like it.

  "They gave me a whole different bunch of tests and just placed me where they said." Harry gave a small laugh, not noticing the other staring at him. "It's weird that I can remember school things, even though I'm pretty sure I never /took/ Arithmancy before, but I can't even remember my last name."

  "That is weird," Remus agreed, a small grin on his face. "It will be nice, though, to have someone to work on my project now. The class has an odd number, so I was stuck by myself."

  "I could have helped you, Remus," Lily said. "I may not be in the Advanced class, but I would have helped you if you needed it."

  Remus grinned again. "Thanks, Lils."

  "Moony, you're admitting you need help?" Sirius said as he turned to the boy next to him. "I never thought to see the day."

  Peter laughed. "I thought that you, Padfoot, would admit that you liked...."

  Sirius held his hand over Peter's mouth. His face had darkened slightly. "Don't say it, Pete."

  Harry watched them all, a little confused by the nicknames. "Where did you get those names?"

  The three boys across from his shuffled around slightly in their seats as James turned to him. "Just some names we made up... two years ago?"

  Remus nodded, and Harry saw that he was finished.

  "Would you show me to the Arithmancy classroom? I need to stop by my new room to pick up my book for that," Harry asked.

  The other boy nodded. "I'm finished, are you?" Harry nodded. "Then let's go. I already have my book, so we could just go to your room and then head to class."

  "Thanks!"

******

  Severus looked up from the book he was reading to find Harry standing in front of him.

  "Hi!" the other boy greeted him. "Is it all right if I sit here?"

  Severus looked around the library. Off to the far corner he saw Potter and his gang watching them carefully. "You don't want to sit over there?" he asked in a cold voice.

  Harry shook his head, seeming to have ignored the tone of the other boy's voice. "No. I really liked talking to you this morning, and I was hoping you could tell me more about the potions you've been working on. After my experience with that Claritiserum, if you could produce a truth serum that didn't make you feel weird like it, it'd be great!"

  Waving a hand at the chair next to him, Severus eyed him carefully. After the fuss in the classroom, he wasn't quite sure what to make of the other boy. He was obviously powerful enough to get around the anti-apparation wards surrounding the castle, but he'd had difficulty understanding why a certain ingredient worked in the potion from this morning. Deciding that if he had trouble with that, Harry could be trusted enough for Severus to tell him about his pet project.

  "I can do that," Severus said, pulling his chair a little closer. "Just don't go around telling anyone else. I'm hoping that I can get the kinks worked out of it to sell to one of the big potions makers. I need the money for the schooling I need for my mastery in potions."

  Harry nodded and smiled softly. "I will. I think you'll make a great potions master, Severus. From what I saw today, you really know what's going on." The boy frowned slightly, and Severus thought that it didn't quite fit his face. "I certainly didn't. I have the feeling that potions isn't exactly my strong suit."

  Severus let a half-smile creep over his lips, knowing that only Harry could see it from the way he was facing. The boy in front of him was fairly modest, yet was very outspoken. He liked that fact, and hoped that they could become great friends - and maybe a little more if it worked out.

~*~

  James turned his back on the pair across the main room of the library. It was up to Harry who he spoke to, and as long as it wasn't Malfoy or his cronies, he didn't particularly mind. He was just glad that he'd talked to Harry before his friends had arrived, giving both boys time to talk about several things, including the war, and just why, exactly, Harry had wanted to talk to him about - which was why he hadn't been put into a house.

  Sirius, on the other hand, was ranting about how Harry was two-faced for talking to such a slimy git like Snape. Remus was sighing in an exasperated way, having heard Sirius' lecture on the evils of Snape the day before, all because he had a crush on the Slytherin boy. Surprisingly, Peter was voicing his distrust in the new boy.

  "I want to know why the Hat couldn't Sort him," Peter was saying. "It said all houses and none."

  Sirius nodded but didn't say anything, for which James was glad.

  "All that means is that he shows all the qualities of each of the houses," Lily said. "The Hat probably couldn't decide which would be the best for Harry."

  "Or the Hat couldn't tell from what Harry can remember," Remus interjected. "It could have felt that, because he has no true personal memories, the Hat couldn't put him into a specific house because it wasn't sure how Harry could adapt."

  James nodded. "It could be both."

  "Or it could be neither," Sirius countered.

  "Padfoot," Remus said. "Just because you don't like Snape isn't a reason not to talk to Harry because he talks to him."

  "Precisely," Lily added. "Besides, Snape needs friends as well. He never talks to any of the other Slytherins anymore."

  James looked at her. "How do you know?" he asked, curiously.

  She shrugged her shoulders. "From watching in class and trying to avoid Malfoy."

  James laughed. "That reminds me. Sarah Giles told me that Harry told Malfoy off in Transfiguration this morning. That Slytherin prat told him that he was speaking to the wrong people - meaning us and Snape - and that *he* would be better."

  Sirius grudgingly admitted that he'd talk to the Ravenclaw girl as well. "She said that Malfoy stuck his hand out and Harry refused to shake it, saying that he could figure out the 'wrong sort' for himself."

  "Malfoy's the 'wrong sort' all right," Remus said. "He gives me the creeps sometimes."

  James agreed. "He's certainly an iceman." He looked down at his Divination book, wondering why he had stayed in the class for five years. "Well, I think we'd better get cracking on our homework. I wanted to go down to the kitchens later tonight."

  Sirius grinned and picked up his quill. "We haven't been there in a while, haven't we?"

  "Not since we lost the map," Peter added glumly.

  Lily shook her head at the long face James felt on his face, as well as the other three boys' hang-dog expressions at the table. "It was your own fault. You didn't even look at it before you left that room."

  James gave her a sullen look. "At least I didn't have my cloak with us. Filch would have kept it as well. At least it was blank. I don't even want to think of what would have happened if Filch realized what it was."

  "That would have been bad," Peter said, nodding his head in agreement.

  Sirius and Remus nodded in a grave manner. "The end of the world as we know it," Sirius said in a grief-stricken voice.

******

  Harry found himself sitting next to a Ravenclaw named Skye Gordon the next morning. As Charms wore on, the more he felt the... he wasn't sure if he should call it darkness or what... but whatever it was he didn't like it. He had been hoping to sit next to James or Remus, but the only available seat in the classroom had been on the Ravenclaw side. Even sitting next to a girl named Sarah, who seemed friendly with Lily, would have been much better than the end seat he was seated at.

  Professor Flitwick had been talking about charms for the household, and Skye had been muttering under her breath that such things were for House Elves. Harry wasn't sure exactly who or what they were, but he felt sorry for them if they met up with the girl.

  He did like Ravenclaw's Head of House. The small man was full of energy, and his enthusiasm about Charms seemed to rub off on the students. It also helped that Harry found he could do these exercises a lot better than Potions or Arithmancy.

  Harry hid a smile at the thought of Arithmancy. Remus had helped him get up to speed on the class when the professor had gotten him lost. He was pretty sure he hadn't taken the class before, but Harry was certain that the professors wouldn't have put him in that class if he didn't know the subject.

  He was pulled from his thoughts by cussing next to him. It wasn't the first time that the girl had said something like it, but he didn't like the sound of the word 'Mudblood.' From the tone of her voice, it was nasty sounding. Thankfully the bell rang, and with a quick look at his timetable, he set off to the greenhouses, where he would have class with the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs.

  The few Hufflepuffs he'd met had been very nice, even if their head of house seemed a bit off his rocker. One of them, a boy named Gilbert Abbott, had shown him how to get to the library yesterday evening after dinner. He had eaten with the Ravenclaws last night and the group he'd been sitting with had left before he realized he didn't know the way to where James had said they could talk.

  When he got to the greenhouses, the professor, Handel, pulled him aside to finish the testing for the class. Harry wasn't sure if he liked him or not. He threw himself into his job so much that he often neglected his students. And with him being the Head of Slytherin, it wasn't the ideal situation. From what he had seen of the Slytherins he had already met, it was rare to find someone who... Harry guessed he could say tolerated the other students. Severus was one of the few who didn't seem to mind Harry talking to all the houses.

  Harry quite liked the other boy. They had talked about the war as well, and they had spent the rest of the time to curfew discussing how Severus' new potion could be used to help the Ministry catch criminals.

  A light touch on his shoulder made him jump, turning swiftly to see Madam Pince, the librarian, standing behind him with a startled look on her face.

  "I'm sorry for startling you... Harry, was it?" At his nod she continued, "It's time for the library to close tonight, you two. Five more minutes."

  Harry looked around and found the other corners of the library were already quite dark and the last stragglers but he and Severus walking out the doors across the room. He hadn't realized just how long they'd been talking.

  "I guess we should get going, then?" he asked as he pulled his books together.

  Across from him, Severus gave another one of those half-smiles he had been tossing at Harry. "Are you going to be spending the night with Potter, again?"

  Harry shook his head, curious at the tone his friend talked in. He couldn't quite distinguish what it was, but brushed it aside to answer Severus' question.

  "No. I have my own room," he said as the two of them made their way to the library's doors. "It's close to the hospital wing, since Madam Pomfrey wants me to take a potion every morning. Awful tasting thing it is."

  A snort came from Severus' direction. "That would be the nutritional supplement, I take it?"

  Harry laughed. "According to her, at some point I was severely malnourished, probably before the age of eleven."

  Severus didn't laugh, and Harry felt a little uncomfortable at his stare.

  "What?"

  "You laugh?"

  "Would you rather I get angry about it?" Harry countered. "I can't remember what made that happen, and at this point it seems like one of the few things I would rather not remember." He looked up and found they were ten meters from his door.

  Giving the password to the portrait of the young boy guarding his door, Harry looked at Severus.

  "I have Runes with you in the morning, don't I?" he asked.

  Severus nodded. "Meet you there?"

  Harry gave a half-smile. "How about after breakfast? I got roped into breakfast with a couple of Hufflepuffs, who wanted details on Potions this afternoon." He gave a small laugh. "My popularity is making my head spin."

  The other boy nodded and shifted his bag before turning slightly. "Breakfast it is, then."

Thanks to every one that reviewed.

Death – I'm updating! You reviewed Run to the Water, right? It's supposed to be unbalanced and unresolved. Life sometimes doesn't tied everything up into pieces. I may write a sequel that will tie up loose ends, but it won't be happening anytime soon. And if Harry is being a little childish, I think he deserves it. Too much was put on his shoulders too early in life.

Acyla – thanks for catching it! My sister and I went over it several times, but sometimes we still miss things, and spell-check doesn't catch everything, either. As for Harry/Remus, have you checked out my story Love Bite? I know it's a shameless self-plug, but I'm doing it anyway.

Bookwrm580 – thanks!

Lady Russell Holmes – thanks! As for using Heron, go ahead. I only read your review for Beyond the Broken Mirror when I checked the ones for this story. And I really will get that one finished. It's being revamped slightly, but only in terms of restructuring the chapters.

Rebecca Cecilie – favorites?! Wow! And thanks a bunch!

CastusAlbusCor – thanks!


	6. Part 6

Thanks to everybody that's reviewed! It's greatly appreciated.

Chapter Six

  James sat back on the couch and watched as Harry opened the gift he and Lily had gotten him. He had looked totally overwhelmed by the idea that they had even gotten him one - it was if he hadn't been expecting to get anything in return for the gifts that he had made all of his friends. It had made him think about the other boy's guardians and just why they had treated Harry like they had. Then that thought reminded him of everything that had happened in the two months since his arrival. Between the slow trickle of memories - that wasn't anywhere near what Harry admitted to wanting them to be - and the Dark Lord's attempts to recruit him, Harry had had the friends he had collected in an uproar. Enough to the point where all of them had tried to work together.

  It hadn't worked, much like Lily had predicted it wouldn't. There was too much enmity between Sirius and Snape for that. James could correlate that to the Incident in fifth year. And while it had taken a while for Peter to warm up to the other boy, he was staunchly defending he newfound friend against some of the taunts of the other houses. That wasn't to say that there wasn't some jeering within Gryffindor either. Still, the meeting between Snape, Abbott and a couple of other Hufflepuffs that James really didn't know, and their group had decided they would just work to ensure that Harry was comforted and protected from detractors.

  James was especially proud of Remus and Lily's charms. The two of them had come up with several that would protect Harry against certain types of attack magic. They wouldn't protect him against a lot, but they would at least warm him of attacks.

  A smile twisted his lips as he thought of Lily. His girlfriend had adopted Harry as the brother she never had. At first, James had been unbelievably jealous of the situation until Lily had sat him down and lectured him on the foolish behavior he was engaged in. At the beginning, he'd thought she was talking about the midnight Beater's game he and Sirius had played the night before, but had counted himself lucky that he'd had the foresight not to mention it. Though he wasn't sure she hadn't found out about that after all.

  He looked up and saw that Harry had now opened the gift Snape had sent him. The glass vials held a purple liquid. James dimly remembered that potion from class earlier in the year. It was a Dreamless Sleep potion, making James think more kindly of Snape for a brief moment. The other boy must have known of Harry's nightmares. James could still hear him screaming that one night he had spent in the Gryffindor seventh year boys' dorm. The shrill yells had sent shivers running along James' spine. Harry hadn't remembered anything about it, but James could still hear "He's not the spare" being mumbled over and over again.

  James wasn't sure if he really trusted Snape, but if Harry did, he would make sure that they could meet up with each other. He was glad that the Slytherin had gone home for the holidays - as had most of the castle. In Gryffindor, only he, Lily, and Remus had stayed. Everyone else had wanted to spend time with their families as much as they could. There were a couple of Hufflepuff second years, and Randall Turpin, the only Ravenclaw to stay at the castle, and only because his entire family were Aurors and the Death Eaters seemed to be pushing hard.

  Of Voldemort... not a lot had been heard from the Dark Lord after his last attempt to get Harry to join the Death Eaters. Which hadn't been fun.

  James wanted to laugh as he remembered the panic that had spread across the black owl's appearance in the Great Hall. Normally the color of the owl meant that someone in a person's family had died. When the owl landed in front of Harry, though, everyone had been puzzled - at least until Harry broke open the seal.

  Voldemort's voice had burst out loud, sending several students into a faint and more than that screaming in fright. Looking closer at the bird in a surreal moment of focus and disconnection from what was happening next to him, James noticed that it was snowy owl - so the black was even more unnatural. Then some of the things that the Dark Lord was saying started to sink in. Voldemort, based on the display of power he had produced in a recent Defense Against the Dark Arts class dealing with a Patronus (which made James wonder if Harry really did know about his animagus form after all), had decided Harry was a very good candidate to join him, and that - this time - he was prepared to offer him a place as second-in-command.

  All of which hadn't endeared him to the Slytherins and in particular Lucius Malfoy. And now, with the holidays, the house of Slytherin was conspicuous in their absence from the castle. Harry had been worried about this when he found out that Snape was going home as well. As much as James didn't like Snape, he thought that there was a reason to be worried. Snape had only gone home one other time in seven years and that had been the first, now that he thought about it.

  "James?"

  Lily's voice broke into his thoughts. He looked up to find his girlfriend sitting on one of the arms of the chair James was sitting in. Her bright green eyes were bright as the light of the fire touching her face. Her red hair framing here face as she leaned over, Lily pressed a kiss to James' cheek.

  "So what do you think of Harry?"

  James smiled. "I hope that this is a much better memory than the few he has."

  Lily frowned before nodding in agreement. "Sometimes I feel so sorry for him. It's got to be hard not knowing what could trigger a memory. And some of them seem pretty bad."

  "Just don't let him know that," he warned. He watched Harry and Remus set up a game of wizard chess.

  "I know," Lily sighed. "I just wish that we could help him with it."

  James stared at her. "Lily, he won't take any more help. Most of what we've done so far is starting to chafe him." His voice quieted. "I know it would me."

  She sighed again. "I...."

  He pulled Lily down into his lap and wrapped his arms around her, keeping her close. "I know, Lils. I know."

******

  Severus held back the tears until he reached the relative safety of his rooms. He wasn't truly safe anywhere in Snape Manor as long as his father was in residence.

  He stared at the ugly, black tattoo that marred the pale skin of his left forearm. Severus had fought his father for so long not to get it. He should have known just by the request itself was bogus. Severus had been so happy, though, to hear from his grandmother that he'd forgotten to be wary of the sudden missive. Now his grandmother was no longer among the living and he had this thing on him.

  The tears he let fall were a luxury now, since there was no doubt in his mind that his life was over. Harry would probably never want to speak to him every again, and may even report him to the Ministry. His one true friend that he'd ever made, and he was gone with the appearance of the skull and snake that marked him as a Death Eater.

  Severus finally cried himself out in the middle of the dark night. There were no clouds in the sky to disguise the bright stars on the night of the new moon. The wind was chilly as he opened the window - there must have been a storm in the making in the North Atlantic. Even now he could smell the salt on the air as it blew the five miles to Snape Manor.

  He stayed at the window for as long as he could stand. Severus just wished he could numb his mind the same way as the wind did his arms and hands. Then, maybe, he wouldn't have to feel the shame and self-pity that wanted to overwhelm him now that the anger had settled down. It was times like these that Severus wished one could use the killing curse on oneself. Then he would be able to save himself the misery of the abandonment by the only friend he'd every made.

  Finally, as the sun crept up in a blood-red sky, Severus resigned himself to a lonely destiny.

******

  It wasn't working.

  Severus wasn't sure why, but all he knew was that Harry was not acting like he'd thought he would. At first he'd tried ignoring him, figuring that, sooner or later, Harry would give up on trying to talk to him. A month later and Severus decided he had to switch tactics, and had become even _more_ rude than Lucius and his groups. While the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs had tried to persuade Harry from giving up, the boy who couldn't be sorted wasn't detoured from his mission.

  Now that three months had passed since the return from holidays, he was ready to admit defeat. And it was pretty damn hard to do so. He'd only done it once before and that had been when he'd tried to argue with the Sorting Hat about being put in Slytherin when he wanted into Ravenclaw. He wasn't even going to think about what happened over the holidays as a defeat. It was hard to do much of anything when under the Imperius curse and fighting it all you are worth.

  "Severus?"

  Speaking of the determined boy... He looked up from his usual seat at the library to find the other boy watching him with concern, his green eyes shining even in the dim light.

  "Harry."

  Something must have shown in his voice because Harry threw down his bag and wrapped both arms around the taller boy.

  "Oh, Sev. You can tell me."

  Severus shook his head. "No. You'll hate me, and I can't handle that."

  "Sev?" Harry laid his cheek on top of Severus' head. "Please tell me."

  He allowed himself a brief moment to lean into Harry's lithe body. He could feel a reassuring heartbeat under his right ear, and there was a slight scent of spring that Severus recognized as being Harry's own. He went to sit up, but Harry's arms tightened.

  There was a small crackle of energy that made Severus realize that he had closed his eyes, so he opened them to find Lucius and his cronies on the other side of the table.

  "Trying to recruit for the Dark Lord now, Snape?" the blond heir to the Malfoy estate said.

  Severus glared, while inside he was cringing. "Hardly," he made himself say while willing Harry to - if he couldn't forgive him - at least understand what he was going to say next. "I'm just keeping an eye on him like I was told to do. "_You_ get in trouble with Him because you are too flashy when doing a job, thus drawing everyone's attention. To prove my case I'll bring up the incident with that Hufflepuff at the Quidditch game two weeks ago."

  Lucius flushed a little, but didn't say anything.

  "I am much subtler than you, thus having gained more favor than you in His eyes."

  Harry's arms hadn't let go at all while Severus was speaking. Now that the Slytherin was through, he loosened them enough to stand up all the way.

  "Malfoy, I don't think that I have ever said this to another person, but fuck off!" There was another crackle of energy and then Slytherin contingent was gone.

  Severus looked around. No, they were the ones who had left. He didn't recognize the room, but it looked comfortable and lived in.

  "Where are we?" he asked as he watched Harry go through an open doorway at the back of the mid-size room. The walls were painted a soft cream, and the color was repeated in the carpet as the background to the silver and gold fleur-de-lis that were patterned on it. Two chairs sat before the fireplace, while a sofa and table were in the center of the room. Some of Harry's papers and books lay scattered across the dark stained table, in spite of the large desk tucked into a corner.

  "In my rooms," Harry answered as he came back into the room. In each hand was a glass of pumpkin juice.

  Severus almost smiled before remembering how he got here. "Did you apperate me here?"

  Harry shrugged. "You could call it that, but I've read you can't apperate anywhere in Hogwarts."

  The seventh year Slytherin could hold back the laugh this time. "Just because you've read it doesn't mean that it's absolutely true."

  A cheeky grin was flashed at him. "I didn't say I believed it to be true."

  Severus eyed the boy who stood across from him. He finally understood why the Sorting Hat hadn't been able to place him in any one house. The distinguishing characteristics of each were an integral part of his personality. It didn't have anything to do with his lack of memories (which was the widely believed theory in Hogwarts) and everything that was a part of his soul. Loyal, brave, smart, and cunning - the cherished traits of the founders were combined in a boy-almost-man that could only remember his first name.

  He looked at the other boy, who was smirking behind his glass, and shook his head at his antics. "Sometimes I wonder about you."

  "You do?" Harry grinned in a disturbingly James Patter sort of way. "I do that all the time. _And_ I think that everyone else is doing the same. I'm thinking, Sev, that you're just a little behind the times these days."

  Severus growled. "I'm not behind the times. I just take a little longer than most people before I make up my mind. People who make quick judgments are annoying."

  Harry looked at him intently and tilted his head slightly to the right. "Then that must be why it's taken you this long to remind yourself that I will always be your friend."

  The taller boy shuddered slightly before he could stop himself, before collapsing on the surprisingly comfy sofa. Severus had been dreading this moment every since that awful night that seemed forever ago and only last night.

  "Harry...."

  The boy he was addressing sat close to him, thigh brushing thigh. Severus barely controlled the blush that threatened.

  Harry pulled Severus' teacup from numb fingertips.

  "You can tell me, Sev."

******

  James was startled when Harry suddenly popped up from the middle of the wall. The boy they had started to call Joker, after the song Lily had introduced to him one weekend in Hogsmeade with a smuggled record, had red-rimmed eyes, the skin surrounding them slightly puffy. James stood up, ignoring the slide of books to the floor from his lap.

  "Harry?"

  He flung an arm around the smaller boy's shoulders and guided him to the nearest seat.

  "What's wrong, Harry?" James asked, glad that he was the only one in the room at the moment. He was especially glad of it when Harry told him.

  "I need to start seeing Sev on the sly," Harry said as he composed himself. "If I don't, he might be killed."

  "What!?" James exclaimed. "Killed?"

  Harry nodded. "His father..."

  "You can tell me, Harry. I won't tell any one else if you don't want me to."

  The other boy hesitated for a moment before nodding again. "You can tell Lily if you want. But... you know most of the hallways in Hogwarts, don't you?"

  "Yes," James answered, seeing where this was going. "You want me to show you them."

  Harry nodded.

  "So you can see Snape without endangering him."

  Another nod.

  "I'll do it, then."


	7. Part 7

AN: Thanks to everyone that had reviewed! I apologize for this being so late, but I was in Missouri helping one of my aunts clean up after a twister hit her house. It was quite hard to look at the devastation those things bring, but she was lucky - she and my cousin are fine.

Chapter 7

  Severus could have sworn he was actually nervous, something he'd never suffered through before.

  It had taken Harry several weeks to convince him to talk to Dumbledore about his unwanted initiation into Voldemort's Death Eaters. He had actually been scared as he had stood before the gargoyle, but this was a life or death situation he was now in. No, the only thing dangerous about the meeting with the headmaster had been the chance of expulsion. Now, though, he was standing among twenty other new Death Eaters to see if they would be joining the Inner Circle.

  He had graduated with honors from Hogwarts; his NEWTs score a respectable fourteen out of fifteen possible. Only two others had tied and none above. Lily Evans - soon to be Mrs. James Potter - and Harry had tied with him, and as long as it wasn't Potter or Black, he had been prepared to be nice, but didn't need it. Those two had scored a twelve and Lupin thirteen. The pathetic Pettigrew had gotten an eight, while Lucius scored a ten. Malfoy senior had then visited the dungeons of Slytherin and had pointed Severus out as an example. He had cringed as Tiberius Malfoy had upheld his learning standards to the whole of Slytherin. The other graduating seventh years had not been amused.

  The only thing that had helped it smooth over was that Severus had left immediately to study for his mastery in potions. A two year long intensive study with an exhaustive weeklong testing at the end, it had given Severus the reprieve he'd been hoping for. Voldemort had approved of the move, stating that he didn't min waiting that long if he gained a Potions master out of it.

  What everybody else hadn't known, but for a select few, was that Harry had accompanied him. The other man had refused the Aurors' offer to train with them, and instead had given the excuse that he was going to search for clues to just who we was. Not many knew he was from a different time - something that had surprised Severus when Harry had eventually told him - so it was easy for people to believe it. So, every once in a while, Harry would show up at the Potters or Abbotts house for a couple of days before supposedly continuing his search, but in reality returning to Severus.

  Three hours later, Severus barely gathered enough energy, both physically and mentally) to apperate home. Voldemort had conducted very thorough interviews of his 'newest' Death Eaters. Most of them hadn't passed muster enough to gain access to the Inner Circle. Those that did - Severus included - had then been treated to a special show. The rejected Death Eaters had been punished according to the wrong answers they had given the Dark Lord. The main 'entertainment' of the night had been a Muggle family Lucius had proudly offered to his lord. The Malfoy heir had faltered for the briefest of moments before turning a malicious yet questioning look to Voldemort.

  Severus had wanted to run at the first curse flung at the family. The skin-flaying spell had hit the eldest child, even as his parents had tried to protect the younger three. The boy, who was around nine, had screamed. After a minute, everything had exploded. Each of the Death Eaters had been expected to help in the torture. The new potions master had flung a couple of hexes that looked painful but wouldn't be noticed as such in the confusion.

  As suddenly as it had started it stopped. Voldemort stepped down from his seat and stepped on the parents, who had finally stopped gurgling in pain and anguish. A lone cry came from the youngest child, an infant of around four months. The Dark Lord, his dark and almost red eyes shining dementedly, turned to Severus as he levitated the child into his arms.

  "Severus," cam the sibilant voice that had convinced many to join his cause. "I believe you will need this thing as an ingredient in the potion I want you to make."

  His eyes widened for a second in horror before he made himself look surprised.

  "My lord," he breathed, "I would be honored to make the ^@^@$#%%&^& potion for you. When do you require it?"

  "The end of next month will suffice, Severus."

  Severus clutched the baby tight and had then wandered about the deserted moor Voldemort and the rest of the Death Eaters had then abandoned on a quest for more blood. Finally, he collected himself together with the thought that Harry would know what to do.

******

  "Angelina."

  Severus looked up from the potions book he was searching through. "Her name?"

  Harry nodded. He looked very natural holding the baby in his arms. His fingers brushed a dark cheek before much smaller fingers grabbed a hold of one of his.

  "Such a pretty, little girl," the green eyed man cooed at her. "We can find you a nice home real quick."

  Severus tried to hold back a smile at the other man's cooing. Most of the children he brought home were of this age, ever since he'd started bringing them home. Voldemort's potion request had led him on a quest of those families that had children of this age - all being from Muggle families and would eventually attended Hogwarts. They wouldn't be missed by the Ministry, as the only way to really track them was once they were five and their magic activated fully.

  Dumbledore had come up with the suggestion that Severus substitute dragon's blood when Voldemort wanted it. The effects of using the blood wouldn't show up immediately, and would be covered up with the order that Dumbledore headed counterattacked.

  Voldemort had earmarked Halloween as a good time to start eliminating his most powerful enemies - the heirs of the other founders. He would start with Hufflepuff's heirs first, because they were the most prolific. Plus, Gryffindor's heirs hid themselves better - at least in terms of their family tree, since most didn't even know they were of his blood.

  Severus wondered if the dark lord was deliberately doing it this way to replay the fight of Gryffindor/Slytherin with a new winner.

  In the meanwhile, he was targeting those future Muggle born students using the same spell the Ministry used for Hogwarts' acceptance letters by way of Lucius' information. The Malfoy heir had recently come into his own with his inheritance of the estate and a job within the Ministry, and had become quite a favorite with Voldemort. His reputation grew when he announced that his wife, Narcissa, had given birth to a boy, who would surely be an asset to Him when he was older.

  That was the point when Severus felt the most hate towards *any* one in his entire life - that a person could sell their own child to further themselves in their greed. It simply reminded him too much of his own father and the Christmas holiday of seventh year. It wasn't ambition to do that. Besides, the only person really allowed any ambition at all was the Dark Lord.

  But Lucius.... Even if Voldemort was defeated somehow, he'd have to keep an eye on Lucius.

  He looked up at Harry, who was feeding the infant in his arms. There was an indescribable look on his face, but Severus could discern that it was partly made up of love.

  Sometimes Severus felt jealous of that. Not because he didn't get any from Harry - far from it. It was the fact that he had to share Harry with both the children and the other friends that Harry had made. Still, it eased his mind every time Harry came home to sleep in their bed and his arms.

  There were some days when it seemed that they'd been together forever. From that day in Harry's rooms when Severus confessed more than two years ago....

###

  Harry grabbed Severus' arm as he tried to leave. The taller boy was ashamed that he had totally broken down in front of his one true peer and friend. And that wasn't all. He shouldn't be allowed even in his presence, let alone in an embrace. The shorter boy had wrapped both arms around his waist and buried his face in Severus' neck.

  "Oh, Sev," Harry breath, a warm burst of air brushing Severus' neck.

  The taller boy shivered at the feeling, still trying to figure out if this was a dream. What probably happened was that Harry had hexed him and this was his subconscious playing out what he hoped it had gone like. There was no way that Harry was willing to be this close.

  "I'll help you any way I can," Harry whispered as he partially lifted his head.

  Severus turned his head just enough to look at Harry directly in the eyes. His green eyes were shimmering with unshed tears of sympathy but never pity. Severus could tell by the determined look that those eyes were set in that Harry would do everything he could.

  Still focused on the green eyes locked with his own onyx ones, Severus closed the distance between their mouths.

  It was a silent communion of everything and nothing. For the first time in his life, Severus was whole and complete 0 all through this heavenly connection with Harry. He pressed just a little bit harder as Harry's lips parted, deepening the kiss until their souls were entwined in it as much as their bodies were. Arms moved to wrap tighter around each other as passion took hold of them.

  Two souls had just become one.

###

******

  Severus watched as Harry continued to wave as the Johnsons drove around the bend in the road. The infant girl that Harry had said was Angelina was comfortably ensconced in the backseat of their small car, the new parents overjoyed with the addition to their family. Harry sighed beside him, and Severus wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him closer.

  "She'll be okay," Severus said in a low voice.

  Harry shook his head. "I know she will be. It's just... I won't be seeing her again for a long time."

  Severus eyed Harry searchingly. His lover had been saying things like that a lot lately, and frankly, it was starting to scare him. He was hoping that it was only nerves as Halloween approached, but even he was beginning to feel that something was going to go wrong.

  The potion was to be delivered tonight. Voldemort was throwing a 'party' to celebrate his newfound immortality by attacking Hogwarts. The students and staff were the unknowing entertainment, as the Dark Lord was planning on capturing Dumbledore, and then make the headmaster watch as he drank the potion Severus had made.

  Unfortunately for Voldemort's party plans, Dumbledore's group, the Order of the Phoenix, had prepared the school for battle. Each of its members were going to be stationed around the grounds until the Death Eaters came within firing distance of the Entrance Doors. At that point, they would try to direct the fighting away from the school. Voldemort wouldn't think it amiss, since most of the Order members were just out of school and would be rooting for the /Gryffindors/ at the quidditch game the next day. Severus wasn't too happy with that, but knew it would work, since the Dark Lord would see it as an opportunity to get rid of his most powerful enemies in a clean sweep.

  Severus wasn't comfortable about the fact that Harry would be in the thick of it. His lover had been the first to volunteer according to Dumbledore the next time they had met. He would be watching over Dumbledore personally, along with James Potter. Harry and Severus had gotten into a huge argument over Harry's choice of partners. It had ended only with the compromise that they agreed to disagree, because no matter what Potter did, Severus wouldn't like him for the simple fact that he owed a life debt to Potter.

  They decided to have a small dinner now that their tiny guest had left. As they ate, the feeling of loss suddenly hit him, and Severus attributed it to Angelina no longer being in the house. The two of them washed up and straightened the house, using the domesticity of it all to forget about what was to come.

******

  James looked over at Harry, amazed at how calm he was. For himself he wasn't scared, but he was terrified for Lily. She was out at Hagrid's hut, watching one of the entrances into the Forbidden Forest. Sure, Hagrid was with her, but James knew that he would react a lot differently to any creature that came out of the forest than most people.

  Only James knew why Harry was actually doing this particular job. The other man had explained just what he had chosen to take this job: Severus Snape. James and Lily didn't trust the other man, but as long as he made Harry happy, they would support the relationship in any way they could. Harry had volunteered to 'guard' Dumbledore so that if Voldemort indeed drank the potion, Harry would attack the Dark Lord with a quick hex.

  Hopefully their plan - that they could get rid of the potion first - would work.

  It didn't.

  James watched from the sidelines as Voldemort gleefully went to drink the 'immortality' potion Snape had come up with. Next to him, he could feel Harry ready himself, even though they were both being held by two Death Eaters each. He knew that Snape was holding himself, and James had suddenly known that he'd done it so that he wouldn't be punished for Harry's escape.

  James didn't like this situation at all. There was something off about tonight and it was only growing more intense.

  A split second later and Harry was free, wand already releasing a spell at Voldemort. The strange clue light hit the Dark Lord and immobilized him even as the Death Eaters moved forward. Harry moved to the side, missing both spells from his captors. He twisted and hit each with his own spell before turning to free first Dumbledore and then James.

  He must not have used as strong a hex the second time, because the Death Eaters to James' right shot a curst back, and this time it hit.

  Harry started convulsing as a black light enveloped him. He started to scream before it was abruptly cut off, a flash of lightning rushing from his body through the darkened night towards the forest. As it did, it seemed as if the heavens wept, for it began to rain in heavy sheets.

  As the sound from Harry stopped, James' attention was pulled from him as Voldemort laughed. Across from him stood Dumbledore, power whipping his robes as it left his body in waves.

  "Well done," Voldemort praised the Death Eater. He turned to Dumbledore. "I wish you luck in trying to free him from this trap, Dumbledore. I'd like to see you reach him now that his soul lives in the land of the dead." He started laughing once more before turning his attention to the vial in his hand.

  James looked to Harry and saw that his body was stopping its convulsing. The green eyes were closed but he was breathing.

  "NO!!!"

  James turned to find Voldemort gripping an empty vial. At first he thought /he/ had drank it, but noticed the black hole that was rapidly growing at their feet in the grass, the rain spreading the mess as it diluted. Then a great burst of magic hit him and he knew no more.

  When he came to, James looked around frantically for Lily once he learned she was in the infirmary. She had been struck by lightning as the storm broke over Hogwarts, and was recovering for the wounds she had garnered in battle.

  Two days later, they held a service for Harry.

******

31.July.1980

  James stood in awe of the newborn he held in his hands. Great tufts of black hair stood on end, while blue eyes already turning the green of Lily's looked up at him. A cute, button nose was centered in the small face above a mouth that was yawning.

  "Hey, buddy," Sirius said, off to one side. "You shouldn't be tired - you didn't do any hard work."

  Lily gave a tired laugh from the bed. "Sirius, you should take your job as Godfather a little bit more seriously."

  Sirius laughed, and James knew that he was grinning at the joke of his name. Instead of looking, though, he continued memorizing every detail about his new son that he could.

  "So what is this little guy's name?" Sirius asked an hour later.

  James looked down at Lily, who was tucked neatly into the bed with their son in her arms. He was sitting as close to the bed as he could get without actually being on it, with Sirius, Remus, and Peter scattered around the room.

  "Harry," Lily suddenly announced.

  As soon as it was said, the candles briefly flickered and there was a quick feeling of repressed magic that flowed through the air. Then it was gone as quickly as it came.

  James and Sirius shared a look, one tainted by the image of Snape sobbing over another Harry that they had known. Lily and Remus shared one as well, the four of them missing the terrified and almost horrified look on Peter's face.

  James would never forget the haunting picture made by the Slytherin trying to wake Harry up as he had woken up from the magical wave Voldemort had unleashed in his haste to apperate off of Hogwarts' grounds. He had waited off to one side as Dumbledore had sent Snape to sleep with first a calming charm before a resting one. Together, the two of them had carried their precious burdens to the castle.

  Snape had stayed at the school ever since then, with the exceptions of his spying on Voldemort - a thing that James would never tell anyone no matter what. He had used the opportunity that the potions professor, Montrose, had never picked a successor and the current substitute had been taken in by Aurors after the battle as a way to stay there.

  For the first time in his life, James felt sorry for Snape, who's only outlet of the grief and pain he must still feel was terrorizing the students in his potions classes.

  "James?"

  He looked up to find all of his friends watching him with concerned and questioning looks. Shaking his head, "I was just thinking about Harry. I think he would have liked to have met this Harry," he answered.

  Remus smiled. "I think that's what happened just now - Harry giving his blessing."

  Lily also smiled. "I believe that is what it was."


	8. Part 8

AN: Chapter 7 was not the last chapter, and this one isn't, either. My convoluted plot starts coming together, I hope. At least, I think so.

OOOh! I got my first ever flame! After almost a year and a half of writing stories on the site, I got my first flame from the ever-original FAG HATER. Apparently, whoever this is came up with the bright idea of writing the word 'fag' over and over again. ::sticks tongue out:: If you want to be childish, I can play at that game.

Also, it's not my fault this took so long. Every time I tried to upload this chapter, ff.net would kick me off. So blame them. I certainly do.

To all of my lovely reviewers: THANKS!!!!!!!

PS. I saw The Matrix Reloaded Tuesday night, and it was totally awesome. There was a 14 minute car chase that was better than any I've ever seen.

Chapter 8

  Severus was not a happy camper.

  He had spent the last eighteen years trying to keep himself sane, and then the Potter brat - yet again - had to go and mess it up again. It certainly didn't help that Potter had started looking like his Harry more and more each day, sinking Severus further into the grief he had never truly let go of.

  He could still remember that first day he had seen Potter. At eleven, his eyes had shone a brilliant green that had taken him back fifteen years ago to another Harry when they had first met.

  He was tired. Tired of teaching brats who didn't want to learn. Tired of dealing with idiots like Black and Potter and having Albus on his back.

  He was tired of life.

  The only thing that kept him going was the thought that he couldn't give up the search for the potion that would free *his* Harry. Severus had kept his body alive all of these years in the hopes that he would be able to bring him back from the land of the dead. As long as there was some kind of connection between it and his soul, there was still a chance that Harry would come back to him.

  He knew that the students thought him a greasy git who only took pleasure in taking points from any other house but his own. They wouldn't even care to know that his hair was greasy for the simple reason that he was looking for the ultimate potion. The research required hours spent over a boiling cauldron, searching for the right ingredients that more often than not blew up in his face. Taking points... they were just a way to relieve his frustration about the entire situation, especially when taken from Potter.

  Severus sipped at his glass of scotch, trying to clear his mind.

  Today, Potter had looked so much like his Harry during potions - at least the way his face had been set with determination when he'd been defending Granger and Weasley from Draco. Plus, it was almost Halloween, and after all these years, losing Harry still hurt. He was tempted to just go and look, but Severus knew that he'd just be there all night, and he couldn't afford that at the moment.

  All of this would throw Severus into a depressed state, bogging his mind down in memories of happier days - days when he would come home after some awful mission for Albus or Voldemort and Harry would be sitting at the table with a wonderful meal and a willing ear. Then they would sit on the sofa and either listen to the wireless or read to each other, taking comfort in just being next to each other. As the moon crept through the sky, they would then head to their bed and make love, only to fall asleep with their arms entwined around each other.

  Severus shook his head. No, he couldn't let himself think about those wonderful times right now. He had too much riding on what was happening in present time to think about the past. He needed to find something to help in the present and even the future.

  It was just too hard watching Harry. His body may be kept alive with various nutritional potions, but they couldn't get rid of the paper-thin skin and shrunken cheekbones. Every once in a while, a spark would dance across the exposed skin, stopping everyone except Severus from touching him for any long period of time. Even in the state he was in, Harry was still the Lightning Child that the Sorting Hat had proclaimed him to be.

  There had been odd points when the lightning would increase dramatically, but as there was no pattern to it, Severus wasn't sure what was causing it. The only noticeable time was Halloween, and the reaction had been growing each year.

  So, no matter what Severus said, Albus wanted him down here watching over Harry on Halloween. The headmaster didn't want to take the chance of Harry tripping the wards by accident when the lightning spread across the rooms. It was too dangerous for him to be left unattended with the atmosphere outside of Hogwarts.

  Fudge had refused to acknowledge Voldemort's return until his last day in office, and it had helped Voldemort's cause. Even though the Minister hadn't been a supporter, his inability to see what was happening in front of his eyes turned out to be his downfall.

  Severus had hated the Minister from the second he had risen to that office. It had been only two months after Voldemort's attack on Hogwarts that he'd come into office after Minister Parks had been ambushed by several Death Eaters on his way home from a late night meeting with the French Minister of Magic.

  The first thing that he had done was having Lucius Malfoy raised to a higher level within the Ministry by way of recommendation - to the Board of Governors of Hogwarts. What he hadn't known at the time was that the men who had suggested Malfoy for his new job had been among the first Death Eaters Voldemort had recruited almost twenty years before. The second thing he had done was to place restrictions on what teachers and students could do if Hogwarts was ever attacked.

  Luckily, he had never done a thorough tour of the school. If he had, Severus would have definitely been thrown into Azkaban for keeping Harry in his rooms in the attempts to bring him back to life. Only last year, when they had gone through all of the items that Barty Crouch, Jr. had collected during his stint as Alastair Moody, had they found the Marauder's Map. Severus had looked at it and had been torn in two by what he had seen. The dot that represented Harry was the faintest gray, and only named him as "H." No full name, but it showed he was still alive, if only the tiniest bit. He counted himself lucky, though, that the Weasley boys and Potter had never investigated what that dot had meant while they were in possession of the map. And if Crouch ever figured it out, he had never told anybody. He may have searched Severus' rooms under false pretences, but Severus had made sure that Harry had been safely away from them. He'd had the feeling the Moody would be going through every teacher's offices and rooms, and more specifically Severus', and had Harry moved up to the hospital wing to be looked over by Poppy for a couple of days. It had been just after Halloween and time for his yearly 'check-up,' so it hadn't looked strange to the nurse, so Severus had escaped detection on all sides.

  Severus went to take another sip and found his glass empty. Instead of going to pour himself another, he rose and went into his bedroom, wondering just if his bed would ever be warm again.

******

  James and Lily looked at Harry.

  "It's time, isn't it," James said.

  Harry nodded. "You both knew this was coming," he responded to the non-question. "I have to go back now. Otherwise, who knows what will happen if I don't."

  The elder Potters didn't look comfortable with losing their son again, but Harry had to get back to Severus. He wanted - no, needed - to be with the other man. This time, when it was all over, he was bonding with Sev so that everything that had happened wouldn't repeat.

  Sometimes is sucked, having half a soul.

  When that curse hit him all those years ago, his soul had split into two. It had taken him years to figure out why that had happened - why part of his soul had stayed on the mortal plane to be born as Harry James Potter exactly nine months from that Halloween, and the rest was in the other realm.

  One of the guides that were a part of the other realm, and who had never existed on the mortal plane, had tried to explain just why Harry's soul had split. Sometimes when a person meets their soul mate, if they are killed before they bond, they will be reborn immediately so that they will eventually meet with their intended for the bonding to finally take place. Even if that happened, there was still a little piece of his soul that had lived on in his 'original' body that kept Severus' soul whole. Harry had worried over its existence, until his mother had pointed out that Severus would have given up on life a long time ago if he hadn't kept searching for the miracle that would bring Harry back to him. So Harry had ruminated over the subject for a while before deciding he wouldn't worry about it.

  While it was technically the land of the dead, there were some souls like his that still had a living body on the mortal plane. Neville's parents were also here with that problem. As long as their bodies were still alive, a small part of their soul was locked in them. It was the reason why Neville went to see them in St. Mungo's every holiday from Hogwarts.

  Harry's case, though, was different. If his body died, the other half of his soul would return to the other-realm and time would stop. Or rather, if both bodies died, it would stop.

  Time was a tricky bitch, sometimes.

  Harry's soul had been looped through time, being born into the almost grown body of Harry Potter before being split into a newly conceived fetus and a shade in the other realm with the barest hint of contact to the mortal plane through his previous body. When the time came for Voldemort to cast the banishing curse that would send Harry Potter back twenty years, the pieces of his soul would reunite in the body of Harry this time.

  Harry had gotten the worse headache figuring that out. At that point, he had wished Hermione had been there to figure it out, since it was the time turner that she had gotten in third year that had triggered his search for the truth about why all of this was happening this way. Come to think of it, he still got headaches when he thought of it.

  The gist of it was that when his soul was finally back together in one piece, they would join in the body that Severus had kept alive in his chambers. It was his true body - the body he would have had if the whole thing had been normal.

  As if anything Harry touched could ever be considered normal, but that was beside the point.

  Harry Potter's remarkable resemblance to James Potter was because of his half-soul - the part that was most like his biological father - was the reason. Brave, curious, and willing to spend any amount of time on anything not schoolwork, it was the reason why the Sorting Hat had only offered Slytherin and Gryffindor.

  When his soul was as complete as it could get without being bonded to Severus' he would take his true physical form: a blend of both James and Lily Potter. That was why no one had known who he was when eleven year old Harry Potter stepped foot into Hogwarts, and why he wasn't connected to the other Harry whom he'd been named for. All because of when Lily had given birth to him, he'd already looked like James.

  Harry had always wondered just why his eyes had been green, when Muggle biology had taught him that brown eyes took precedence over green. His green eyes had been that little part of Lily - her understanding and ability to use what information she had to get around things that weren't important - that had been in both parts of his soul.

  A hand rested on his shoulder, and Harry reached up to rest his own on it. He looked up to see his mother watching him with a concerned look.

  "I know I can't stop you from doing what you think is right, Harry," she said in a low voice. "I just want you to know that no matter what you do, we will support you. Time has tempered our ideas of just who Snape really is, and although your father may never truly love him, he is willing to do whatever is necessary to help you."

  "What about you?" Harry had to ask.

  Lily smiled. "A mother has a special link with her child, no matter how far away they may be. When we first met you, I felt a link with you that I didn't understand at the time. Now, I know what it is, and there will always be that link between us. I love you, and I love Severus for the simple reason that you love him."

  Harry gave a wry grin. "Yes, I do love him. I just hope that he will love me for who I am after everything is over."

  James frowned, but came over to stand behind Lily. "Don't let anyone stand in your way, Harry. I know that you will have problems, especially with Sirius, but let them know what is going on. Besides, you can tell Sirius that you know his little secret. That will shut him up."

  Lily slapped James on the arm. "I hope you're not suggesting Harry blackmail his own godfather. Hmm?"

  James winked at Harry, who was grinning.

  Sometimes it felt so strange to have any kind of conversation with his parents. He had been waiting for something to happen for such a long time after he had gotten here, and then everything had seemed to explode around him. From the moment Harry Potter was born on the mortal plane, Harry had remembered everything that would happen to that other part of his soul. From that point, he had been both dreading and excitedly waiting for his parents to arrive. Harry had wished that there might be some way he would be able to manipulate the mortal plane from the other realm so that he - Harry Potter - would be able to grow up with his parents. Then had come the realization that if he had done anything to swerve time from that path, that Voldemort would have continued to wreck havoc over England and would have soon spread across Europe, and then over the Atlantic to the States and Canada.

  Instead, Harry had to watch, this time from a different perspective, as first James and then Lily Potter killed by Voldemort. When the Dark Lord had attempted to kill Harry Potter, the other realm Harry had felt a strong pull before tugging hard on whatever was on the other end. By doing so, he had snapped the power of the killing curse back to Voldemort. When he did so, however, it lost some of its power, and instead of killing Voldemort, reduced what was left of his soul and released it from a physical body. It still being in the mortal plane had just meant that someday he would be able to gain back a body.

  Harry had known all of this and had been powerless to stop it. In the other realm he had all the knowledge of using the power, but it was tied up with the physical body the other half of his soul possessed.

  And while he was here in the other realm, he had learned even more. Great teachers from different times, including several of his own ancestors, had taught Harry everything he needed to know to finally rid the mortal plane of Voldemort once and for all. And when Voldemort's soul - that tiny part of it that had clung to the Dark Arts that had destroyed the rest of it - reached the other realm, those great teachers would imprison it. Then, no one would be able to resurrect Voldemort in some scheme or another. It was what they did for other wizards who had tried to take over the world, including Salazar Slytherin and Grindewald. Only two had escaped such punishment - the witch Morgana, whose soul had been destroyed when Merlin attempted to do it himself, thus ending his own as well, and a wizard named Deanor, who had lived in the times of Atlantis and was responsible for its sinking. Deanor had been turned into stone to mark where Atlantis had once stood in the mortal plane, his soul trapped forever in it. They hadn't been able to do anything with Voldemort the first time Harry had destroyed his body – if they had, time may have warped too much for the entire cycle to continue, and Harry Potter may not have grown up to become the wizard he was meant to be.

  James and Lily, while not of the teachers who had taught him magic and spells, had taught him of his ancestry and family values. Lily had been most upset to learn that her son had been sent to live with Petunia, and had set out to correct the things that her sister had done to Harry. James, on the other hand, had been determined to teach Harry all about the Marauders and every single prank they had ever played - but had soon learned that showing glee about the ones that involved Severus was Not. To. Be. Done.

  Now, though, Harry was leaving all those he had learned to love here in the other realm behind. Most of them were making a bigger deal out of it than it really was, since he would end up here sooner or later, whether it be Voldemort killing him off for what he had done, or Sirius killing him and Severus for being soul mates. It was going to happen one way or the other.

  Smiling at his parents, Harry took a deep breath as a scene played out on the quidditch pitch at Hogwarts. It was Halloween, and almost the stroke of midnight, as Voldemort and his Death Eaters crossed the boundary between the school and the village of Hogsmeade. Just within the castle walls, the resurrected Order of the Phoenix stood ready for battle, and down in the dungeons, Severus was watching in amazed horror as Harry's body began to flicker in and out.

  In the middle of the pitch, Harry Potter stood, knowing that something big was about to happen. And he was ready for it.


	9. Part 9

I'm sorry for the confusion! Basically it's like this: Harry's soul was split by the curse. Half went to be born to Lily and James Potter. The other half was supposed to go to the other realm. However, since his body was still alive, a tiny part of it – still attached to the part that did end up in the other realm – stayed behind in the body. Mind, this was to be a little confusing, since all of this is explained to Harry, and, while he is quite perceptive, he doesn't have the kind of intellectual understanding of Severus or Hermione's mind. I've always thought of Harry as being more of an instinctual thinker than a 'reasonable' thinker like the other two are. The last chapter – Chapter 10 – will be up in a couple of days. My computer ate the file when I was working on it (::grumbles:: stupid storm that took out the electricity), and I've had to reconstruct it from the notepad program I use to write all of my stories. So, my sister has to beta it once more. When she's done, it'll be here.

Thanks for the reviews! They make me all wriggly inside. On the other hand, it could be from the Vanilla Cremé Frappaccino I'm currently drinking. Mmm... Starbucks.

Chapter 9

  The bolt of lightning came out of nowhere.

  Up until then, the sky had been clear of any clouds, the stars shining in a moonless background of midnight blue. The immediate sky had been filled with Death Eaters flying in on brooms towards the school itself, leaving the seventeen-year-old Harry Potter alone on the quidditch pitch, awaiting the appearance of Voldemort. They had been dueling for five minutes when it looked like Harry was tiring, and Voldemort, seeing an opportunity, threw a curse at the boy.

  "Verbannen!"

  The yellow light sped towards Harry, who opened his arms wide, who knew this was the moment he had been waiting for. As the curse hit, the sky was lit up in a spectacular light show, lightning dancing around the entire area.

  When it stopped, there was a moment of silence as those out on the grounds adjusted their eyes to the dimness. Voldemort had a grin on his face as he took in the charred spot where his nemesis had been standing, figuring that he had sent the foolish boy to a time where he couldn't stop the Dark Lord.

  "Hello, Tom," came a soft voice.

  Voldemort whipped around to find a glowing man behind him. Raven-black hair swirled in a hidden wind and green eyes were lit from within.

  "I've been waiting for this moment for almost twenty years, Tom," the man continued.

  "Who... who are you?" Voldemort asked, suddenly afraid of this man who appeared out of nowhere. The power pouring off him was unbelievable.

  "I'm Harry Potter, Tom."

  "Stop calling me that!" the Dark Lord shouted. "I am not Tom! I am Lord Voldemort!"

  "Lord of what, Tom?"

  Voldemort pointed his wand at the man who called himself Potter. He opened his mouth to shout out the killing curse when his wand was pulled from his hand. He watched as the wood curled back by itself, revealing the shimmering phoenix feather that rested in the core. The wood began to burn, leaving the feather floating in the air between the two men.

  "Lord of Darkness? I have seen much more darkness than you have, Tom, and I have never been tempted by it."

  An arc of lightning swept through the pitch, lighting up the surrounding area and the man facing Voldemort. The hot, white light revealed a scar on the man's forehead, in the shape of a lightning bolt.

  Voldemort backed away.

  "Lord of Evil?"

  Harry took a step forward.

  Voldemort looked around the pitch, and it was obvious he was wondering where all the people had come from. Most of the Order members were standing just outside of the fence, watching with amazed looks on their faces. A figure came running from the school, and the Dark Lord's traitor joined the other members, mumbling something about Harry as he tried to get his breath back.

  "Lord of Muggles? Or Wizards?"

  Voldemort turned back to the man and watched, horror written all over his face, as the phoenix feather started to burn. As it did, it released every single spell it had ever performed. Echoes of long-dead people began to wander around, several walking over to the side of the pitch towards the Order of the Phoenix members. Many more stayed in the general vicinity, watching Voldemort with vengeful looks on their faces.

  Screams echoed throughout the pitch as it lit up with thousands of spells.

  Finally the noise died down, leaving only the sound of Voldemort's heavy breathing the only sound.

  "Lord of what, Tom? Can you rule over anything without your wand?"

  Voldemort's eyes narrowed. "I don't need my wand for everything, boy."

  Harry laughed, a chilling noise that sent shivers down the spines of everyone nearby. "You certainly won't need it where you are going, Tom."

  "I am not Tom!"

  "Then who are you?" asked an echo.

  Voldemort screamed at the echo of his father. "Go away!"

  "You're just a freak like the rest of them."

  Severus' chest felt like Hagrid and one of his blast-ended screwts were sitting on it. He had been sitting in his rooms, frightened at the change going through Harry's body. It had started glowing the same golden color the man out on the pitch, before the lightning had exploded through the room, touching everything but Severus.

  He had looked around the room, amazed at the scorch marks that marked its contents. Then he had turned back to Harry, just in time to watch as his body flickered once before disappearing. He had waited for a minute before panic set in, and he fled out of the school, knocking down several students in his quest to find the headmaster or Poppy.

  Reaching the doors that led out to the pitch, he had seen a strange glow coming from inside it, as well as the general exodus of those still on the grounds towards it. Only in a strange flash of lightning had Severus seen Dumbledore's white hair.

  Now he stood next to the headmaster, not really sure if he was dreaming. It was his Harry, a strange mixture of what he had been before the curse had hit and the form of Harry Potter.

  "Harry?" The echo of Lily Potter was standing next to the other man, her dulled, echoing voice carrying across the pitch. "It's time."

  "I know, Mum," answered the glowing man.

  Severus' eyes widened at the implied situation. Next to him, Dumbledore gasped. On his other side, Black was gripping the fence with white knuckled hands, but part of that was because of the visit he had from James and Lily Potter before they had drifted back to the center of the quidditch pitch.

  "Harry," Severus whispered, his heart seizing for a brief moment in a tumult of emotions, too many to name or number.

  Lightning flashed once more on the pitch, illuminating the grounds. Voldemort stood as if in a trance, as Harry lifted his hands. As he did, the lightning changed from white to a quicksilver blue color, wrapping around his raised hands. It swirled once before it danced among the hundreds of echoes still in the pitch, gaining power as it did.

  "Goodbye, Tom," Harry whispered.

  The crimson eyes of Voldemort widened for the split second he had before the lightning hit him. His body jolted sporadically, the blue lightning running over his skin and through his veins like wildfire - uncontrollable and untamable.

  An echoing scream resounded around the pitch, before the night fell eerily silent.

  On the pitch, Harry fell to his knees in exhaustion.

  "Severus." His voice was raspy, barely carrying over the wind that began to blow.

  His eyes locked for a brief second with that of the potions master, before black swept over him.

******

  Severus didn't know what to make of it. He was in the hospital wing, waiting with numerous others on the outcome of Poppy's mediscan of Harry. It all seemed as if he were in a dream. There was no way that Harry had suddenly woke up, but then he thought that he'd always been Harry Potter, a boy that Severus hated for the simple fact that his own Harry wasn't beside him.

  His head hung down, and every once in a while, he wiped a hand across closed eyes, thinking over every thing that had happened since he had first seen Harry twenty years ago. He knew that Harry hadn't known who he was back then, except for brief flashes that had made no sense. And as Harry Potter, the boy had shown no indication of knowing anything about the past.

  So what the hell was going on?

  Poppy came out of the private room Harry was in at that moment, giving Severus a reprieve from his circling thoughts.

  "Other than being exhausted both physically and mentally, Harry's doing fine."

  Next to Severus, Black heaved a great sigh of relief, his one concern being his godson now that Pettigrew had been captured the night before. On the other hand, Granger and Weasley were already making protests about seeing their friend.

  Albus stood up. "And what of the physical changes, Poppy?"

  The mediwitch shook her head. "I don't understand all of this, Albus, but from what I've gotten from my scan, Harry is now the equivalent of a thirty year old man. But the oddest part of this is, the magical reserves I found are exactly like they were twenty years ago from another Harry."

  At that point, Lupin spoke for the first time since they had all stood down at the pitch, watching Harry collapse.

  "Do you think he is the same Harry as...?"

  Severus was thinking the same thing. The similarities between the two Harrys were too many not to be a coincidence, yet there were still a lot of differences that made it difficult to decide what in Merlin's name was going on. If it was Harry, would they be able to put everything behind them and start again? He had been struggling to find anything that could bring Harry back for that reason, but now that the chance was here, was he ready to take it?

  "Hm," Albus finally said. "When he wakes up, we'll have to run some more tests." He looked at Poppy. "Until then, I suggest we all wait to visit with him."

  "Albus...?" Severus said, after waiting for the others to leave. Black was the last one out the door, taking another look at the door that separated him from his godson. It was one of the few times that Severus approved of the other man, even if he would never like him.

  The headmaster turned from where he was talking with Poppy.

  "I..." Severus hesitated. He didn't like doing this, but he needed to see if this was really his Harry, even if he was unconscious. "I need to see him, even if for a minute."

  He watched as the other two in the room looked at each other. Finally, Dumbledore nodded and guided Poppy off to the other side of the open ward of the infirmary.

  Severus went and stood in front of the closed door, taking a deep breath. He had to know if it was his Harry that lay there, or just some miracle that Potter had pulled off. Another breath and he entered the room, his eyes pulled to the still figure lying amid crisp, white sheets. A tousled mop of black hair half hid the closed eyes that Severus just knew would be a startling shade of green, a brighter color than all of the emeralds ever dug from the earth. This time, though, he knew that he would also find a scar, a quite famous scar, that he had never felt – whatever Dumbledore had done to cover up the scar had done too well of a disguise for Severus' fingers to ever discover its shape. 

  Trembling fingers ran over the smooth skin of one cheek. The pads of his fingers remembered the silkiness of soft lips as he repeated a motion done a million times before. He had watched Harry wake up every morning that they had shared a bed, knowing just what kind of touches would bring him fully awake and avoiding them. Harry had never woken up to fingers on his lips, responding only to the brush of Severus' mouth on his, and this time was no different.

  Severus debated whether or not he should speak. He truly needed to see if it really was his Harry that was sleeping contentedly, but he was.... Scared. Severus didn't like to admit it, but he was scared - scared it really was a dream.

  The decision was taken out of his hands when eyelids fluttered wildly over green eyes. Severus pulled his hand back until it was grabbed by a warm touch of fingers.

  "Sev?"

  Black eyes searched the face in front of him. Harry's face held a look that Severus had seen only pointed at him, a mixture of love and respect and, oddly enough, exasperation.

  "Harry," he breathed.

  The green-eyed man gave a sleepy smile. "I missed you," he breathed in a raspy voice, the same one that had haunted Severus for years.

  Severus gave a half-smile. "And you..." The smile drew wider as Harry gave a little chuckle at Severus' response. It was what he usually said, a little too embarrassed to say the words. Harry yawned, and Severus berated himself. The man had just woken up after a two-day bout of unconsciousness and he hadn't made sure he was comfortable.

  "Would you like some water, Harry?" he offered, moving towards the bedside table.

  "You wouldn't happen to have some painkillers on you, though?" Harry responded, nodding his head.

  "Oh, Harry," Severus said as he laid a hand on the man's forehead. The skin was hot under his touch, and a bit sweaty as well. "I need to get Poppy."

  "Sev," Harry rasped out. "Hurry back. And... whatever happens, don't let Sirius get to you." Here there was as stern a glance as Harry could give. "I need to tell both of you what happened." The green eyes were heavy-lidded, but Harry's face was earnest despite the obvious effort it took to talk.

  Severus nodded in agreement, before setting off to find Poppy.

******

  Harry looked at everyone gathered around his bed. Poppy had thoroughly examined him, exclaiming over the damage his own power had caused his body. No matter how much he argued, Poppy had confined him to bed, even going so far as to threaten him with binding him to the damn thing. Thus, the conference that Dumbledore call was here and not in the headmaster's office.

  Ron and Hermione were looking at him strange. Neither one of them were sure if this really was their friend Harry or not. The only similarities between their friend and the man on the bed were their green eyes and the scar on their forehead. His two friends also looked unsure as to why they were included in this meeting.

  On the other hand, Sirius, Remus, and McGonagall were gob smacked over the entire situation. The three of them had been shocked at the revelation that the Harry that had landed in the middle of the quidditch pitch twenty years ago was the same boy that had been raised as Harry Potter. Sirius, in particular, was thoroughly stunned by the appearance of the echoes and the talk he'd had with two of them Halloween night. James and Lily Potter had laid to rest, once and for all, Sirius' guilt over another Halloween, and since then, he'd been in shock. Remus had been, as well, from his encounter with his friends, but had recovered almost entirely, until he had walked into Harry's room in the infirmary.

  Only Severus and Dumbledore hadn't been shocked by who they had met when Harry woke up. Severus had been wary, and Harry knew that he'd been thinking that it was a dream - or a nightmare. Dumbledore, though, had taken it in stride like he always did. The blue eyes had twinkled at him, even as he offered a lemon drop, despite Poppy yelling at him to shoo.

  "It's good to have you back, Harry," Dumbledore started the meeting.

  Harry laughed. "I haven't felt this whole in ages."

  He directed a warm look towards Severus, who's black eyes lowered briefly before returning the glance for a quick second, all much to the disgust of Sirius and Ron. Harry glared at the two when they opened their mouths to protest such an action.

  "Don't say anything until I'm finished."

  The two snapped their mouths shut at the implicit instruction.

  "Voldemort's banishing curse wasn't cast correctly. Basically, the book he got it from, the author wrote it down wrong and didn't catch the mistake. If he'd cast it correctly, he would have taken over a long time ago. That curse is supposed to banish the soul from existence, but what he did was banish my body. Unfortunately - or maybe fortunately for my parents- it was three years too soon."

  Remus made a little noise. "You mean to say that if all this hadn't happened, then Lily would have become pregnant with you in seventh year?"

  Harry nodded, taking in the shocked faces of Remus and Sirius, and the bewildered look of Ron and Hermione. Dumbledore and Severus hadn't shown a reaction, but he knew they were waiting for all the information before they formed an opinion. "Yes. Her parents would have kept her home during the Christmas holidays, setting off a chain of events that would have led to a world ruled by Voldemort. My parents would never have gotten married, and Wormtail would have betrayed my father much earlier than he did."

  "And what about us?" Sirius asked, his knuckled clenched white at the mention of the rat.

  A frown creased Harry's lips. "I don't think you really want to know."

  "It's that bad?" Remus asked.

  Harry nodded, a glassy sheen to his green eyes.

  There was silence for a couple of minutes before Hermione spoke up.

  "So, how come you look like this?"

  The man on the bed sighed. "It's actually quite complicated. First, I have to say, is that this is my true form, and I would have looked like this had Voldemort not existed and my parents hadn't fooled around while in school." Harry gave a pointed grin to Sirius and Remus, who were snickering and blushing at the same time at the mention of their friends. "But, because old Voldie did live - and he threw that curse at me - it caused a slight break in the time continuum. It was small enough for most people not to notice, and no one really knows who triggered all of this in the first place so that it would happen.

  "So, twenty years ago, I landed in the middle of the Gryffindor/Slytherin quidditch game the day after Halloween with no memories. At that time, I really had no memories. I had a brand new soul and an almost fully-grown body to go with it. The memories that I did have were actually premonitions of what was going to happen as Harry Potter got older."

  "So, essentially, you named yourself," Remus said.

  Everybody but Sirius looked at him strangely. The golden-eyed man smiled.

  "When you were born, we were all sitting around, when Lily suddenly said that your name was Harry, and it was as if *you* were agreeing with the name."


	10. Part 10

Here it is, the last chapter! I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I did writing it.

Chapter 10

  "What happened?" Hermione asked. "I mean, the whole thing that produced this split you mentioned?"

  Harry sighed when he saw Severus wince out of the corner of his eye, but he knew he had to tell the others.

  "I lived for a period of three years, from Halloween 1976 to Halloween 1979, at which point Cyrus LeStrange cast a curse at me. It was supposed to send my soul to the land of the dead, leaving my body behind. A fairly new curse, LeStrange didn't cast it right - Voldemort wasn't very aware of the ineptitude of his followers and himself, was he? - and instead of sending all of my soul, it only sent part of it. It split into two parts, really....

  "Actually, half of my soul was sent to the land of the dead, otherwise known as the other realm. This plane is the mortal plane, and the other half of my soul was sent to reside within my mother. At that point, the part of me that was in the land of the dead, had no idea of what was to come, and it wasn't until the other half of my soul was born as Harry Potter that I gained a sense of..." Harry hesitated, not sure how to put what he felt into words. "I guess you could say that I became resigned to what was happening."

  "Did you have any idea of what was going on down here?" Ron asked, finally speaking.

  Harry shrugged. "I did, but not until Voldemort tried to kill me the first time. I didn't realize what was going to happen until I watched as first my father then my mother was killed. I never got the chance to stop that bastard...."

  The room started to shake the more Harry got agitated, before Dumbledore cast a quick calming charm on him. It didn't lessen Harry's magical burst, so the headmaster cast a sleeping charm on the man. As soon as it took effect, Dumbledore sighed in relief.

  "I suggest we take a small break," he lightly suggested, as he looked at the half-frightened, half-worried faces that were watching the slight form on the bed, his chest rising and falling in the soft cadence of sleep.

  Harry smiled at Severus as everything settled down once again and he woke up from the enchanted sleep Dumbledore had sent him into. Poppy had threatened him with the body bind if he got agitated again - she did not appreciate her infirmary looking like what the quidditch pitch currently looked like, thank you very much. Now, they were all gathered around his bed once more, Severus seated closer than he had been before thanks to some not-so-subtle manipulation by Dumbledore.

  There were a few things he wanted to talk about with Severus alone, but in the meantime, he would have to wait until at least Dumbledore and Remus were satisfied for a while. He knew that they would have questions later on, when they'd had a chance to think things over. Hermione would hurry to the library - dragging Ron with her despite all of his protests - to look up all the information she could before coming back for answers. And Remus would patiently explain everything to Sirius a couple of times because he was too busy fuming over his godson's relationship with the greasy git of a potions master to listen the first two times.

  Harry hid the smile that came with the last thought. It would take a little while for Sirius to feel comfortable with Harry's love life, but he wouldn't let it interfere with his relationship with his godson. Well, at least not too much.

  "What was your name?" Hermione asked, "The one that the Sorting Hat called you."

  "The Lightning Child," Severus answered. "He couldn't be sorted because the Lightning Child 'belongs in all houses and in none.'"

  "So then why didn't the hat recognize you the second time?" Hermione still wanted to know.

  "Because of a couple of things," Harry said. "The second time I was sorted, I had, at the time, only half of the soul that I'd originally had when I met the Sorting Hat. It couldn't tell that I was missing that half, and so it thought that I was a brand new soul it had never met."

  Harry could tell that Ron was still as lost as he'd been since they started this meeting. Sirius was trying to muddle through, as was Hermione. The other three were in various thinking modes.

  "I know that it's a little difficult to understand - after all, it took me almost a year to really know what was going on."

  "Only that long?" Severus retorted.

  Harry grinned at him. "Considering I got to speak with some of the greatest minds and they were just as confused as I was, I'd say I did pretty well."

  "Like who?" Remus sat forward eagerly.

  "Godric Gryffindor for one." Harry smirked at the six incredulous faces directed at him. "Um," he pretended to think, "Merlin. Annabeth Christopher. Garth MacBeth...."

  "Annabeth Christopher!" exclaimed Hermione. "Really? She was the witch who discovered..."

  "Garth MacBeth!" came from Severus. "The potions master?"

  "Gryffindor!" Ron and Sirius shouted. "Hogwarts' founder?" Sirius continued.

  "Merlin," Dumbledore said, a bright glow to his face as his mind obviously wandered to the man.

  Remus and Harry exchanged amused looks as they both sat back in their seats. They both knew that the meeting was over for now as the other five excitedly tried to ask Harry questions all at once about their heroes.

******

  Severus sat by Harry's bed, content with just watching him sleep. Dumbledore had convinced the other to leave when Poppy had come in to yell at them for keeping her patient from getting some rest. The headmaster had winked at him before ushering Poppy into her office.

  He knew that Harry still had some things to say just by how the other man had hesitated. A lot of years may have passed, but some things didn't change. Plus, he'd had the boy in his classes for a little more than six years, and he knew the telltale signs that there was more to the story.

  When Harry had been explaining everything earlier, he'd' had a hard time listening before he realized he was looking for differences between his lover and his student. Once he had stopped doing that, Severus had been able to relax. The knowledge that *his* Harry wasn't really gone had been reassuring, a soothing balm, to a still wounded heart and soul. In fact, just being able to gaze at Harry had gone a long way to start the healing process, as well as the glances Harry had sent him during the earlier meeting.

  He wasn't going to be optimistic by thinking there weren't going to be any problems in their relationship, but he was willing to give his best effort to make it work. Too much time had passed for them to slide back into the rhythm their relationship had followed before. He wasn't going to give up on the only person he had ever felt comfortable with, even if he was also the person he sometimes, well, most of the time, couldn't stand the presence of.

  He could manage that.

******

  Two weeks later and Severus was torn between throttling the idiot and kissing him senseless. The reckless prat had escaped Poppy's care sometime after lunch, and when he'd failed to show up for dinner, the matron had come ranting for the headmaster. A quick discussion between Dumbledore and Poppy - who really had been shouting - revealed that he had supposed to have gone with the nurse they had hired to help with Harry's physical therapy.

  His body had sustained a lot of damage between the years part of it had spent laying in the dungeon and the effects of the spell he had used to finally rid the world of Voldemort once and for all. The nurse, out of St. Mungo's, would come and get Harry and the two would floo to the hospital, where they had specialized equipment that Hogwarts didn't have, for the afternoon. When Poppy had inquired after her patient, the other nurse had told her that Harry hadn't been there when she arrived, and had left a note that her services were no longer needed, and they he would settle the bill in a couple of days.

  Armed with that knowledge, Dumbledore had gathered several of the staff and the prefects as well as Weasley, and sent them off on a search of the castle. Severus had been volunteered to look through the dungeons, nobody else willing to go down there - not even the Slytherin prefects, from seventh year Draco Malfoy to fifth year Mariah Moon.

  As Severus got nearer to his rooms, he noticed a change in the air. It was as if someone had traced a magical trail through the hallways. The closer he got to his rooms, though, the more that Severus wondered if that wouldn't have been Harry. The magic that had followed what had gone before felt strangely familiar. Harry familiar. Severus sped up once he realized it was Harry's magic that he was feeling. The man must have used the latent magic Severus threw off during the day to find his chambers.

  He hurried to his chambers and lifted his wand to engage the wards guarding his rooms. He went to utter his password when the door opened. Inside the door, the front chamber was dark, but there was a soft glow coming from his bedroom. Severus cautiously entered his chambers, alarmed when the door shut behind him. Raising his wand the tiniest fraction higher, he looked around, trying to see if there was anyone in the room. A strange sound came from his bedroom, and Severus moved towards it. It sounded again, and it was a lot like someone... talking....

  An exasperated sound left Severus' lips as he looked at the scene presenting itself in his bedroom.

  Harry lay sprawled across the big four-poster bed that dominated the bedroom. The covers had slipped to reveal a bare chest, pale skin covering a thin layer of muscle that Poppy and the therapy nurse had helped to create over the last two weeks. Next to the huge bed laid a damp towel, and Severus picked it up, knowing that Harry had always left his towels on the floor. With another swift glance at the sleeping man who was muttering about French fries, Severus left to put the towel in its proper place despite the house-elves. In the bathroom, he found Harry's hospital robe and gown, tossed to the side, a sure sign that he'd been too tired to toss them in the hamper that sat next to the tub.

  Finally he was standing next to the bed, wondering just how to solve his dilemma. Severus wasn't sure if he should forgive and forget everything that had happened and start anew, or if he should take the time he had spent waiting and hoping for Harry to come back to him and release all of his hurt and frustration in one giant burst of emotion. The first thought was linked to his thought of kissing Harry senseless, the second to throttling the sleeping prat.

  "Sev?" a sleepy voice came from the bed. Green eyes, still half-lidded, glistened in the faint light of the fire crackling merrily off to the side. They followed Severus' movements as he sat down on the bed and reached a hand out to touch Harry's cheek.

  "What time is it?"

  Severus sent Harry a weak glare. "I should take you up to Poppy and let you suffer."

  Harry sat up, putting his face within inches of Severus' own. "And give you the chance to avoid me again? Sev..." he sighed. "We need to do something - talk, argue, anything as long as we get everything out in the open."

  Severus nodded slightly. He had been hoping that Harry would be too occupied in the infirmary getting back in shape that he would forget, for the time being, that the two of them needed to sort through things. Well, that answered his question of whether or not Harry had been pushing himself to better health, so he could hunt down Severus when the time came to talk.

  Resolving himself to whatever consequences that came of his actions, he leaned forward and touched Harry's forehead with his. Severus stared deep into the green eyes that opened wide before closing at his closeness. He leaned a bit further, so that their noses were full against each other.

  The green eyes snapped open. "Sev?"

  Harry's whisper breathed across Severus' lips, his breath the same sweetness he'd been missing for the last eighteen years. And now, Harry was here, alive and warm and healthy and touching him with a soft touch to the back of his neck.

  Taking a shaky breath, Severus shifted slightly to the right and pressed his lips into Harry.

  Much like their first kiss, it was a communication - a communication of everything and nothing and there would never be anything that would ever feel like it. The kiss completed them, healed them, made them whole again. This time, though, the entire world contracted and expanded around them as magic wove their souls together. Severus could feel Harry deep within his own soul, and knew that a part of himself now resided within Harry's. They *were* each other, *are* each other, and would always *be* each other.

  Severus pulled back the tiniest bit and watched as the green eyes opened. It seemed as if the entire universe was shining in them, a strange reflection burning deep within Severus as well.

  This would work.

  He definitely knew this would work.

******

  Severus scowled at the seventh years that were waiting for their name to be called. The damn brats couldn't sit still through the boring parts of the special ceremony in which they would be granted their license to practice magic as the school year drew to a close - despite Severus' voluble protests against certain nameless students that go by the initials Neville Longbottom and Hermione Granger. Just a small matter of principal on the last one. She may be one of Harry's friends, but she wasn't going to last long in the academic career she had decided upon if she acted like she knew everything already. The former - he had forty-two cauldrons around the dungeons in various states of disrepair to back him up on that one.

  The scowl deepened when Draco Malfoy's name was called. That particular brat turned out to be the reason why Voldemort had been able to approach the grounds. The Slytherin prefect had somehow found the cornerstone of the wards of the school and destroyed it. Oh, he hadn't been marked a Death Eater, but he hadn't exactly been on the light side either. He'd pled ignorance at his trial and, having pulled it off, was allowed to graduate with his class. Of course, the judge may have taken pity on the now parentless boy.

  His potions grade had certainly reflected Severus' true feeling on the subject.

  Didn't matter to Severus one way or the other on that, as long as the imbecile was far away from him now that he didn't have to deal with the family attached to him. And Harry.

  Speaking of Harry....

  He looked next to him and found Harry fiddling with his robes. The other man looked very uncomfortable to be up on the raised platform for this ceremony. Harry had argued that he really hadn't graduated from school, until Dumbledore had pointed out he already had a degree, and the new Minister of Magic had declared that all accomplishments of 'Harry' had actually been done by Harry Potter on a secret mission in the past.

  Who knew that Arthur Weasley could lie like a Slytherin?

  _'Stop that.'_

  Harry glinted out of the corner of his eye at Severus. _'I'll do it if I want to,'_ he responded.

  _'You look foolish,'_ Severus pointed out.

  _'I can look nervous if I want to.'_ Harry's tone had suddenly turned quite childish sounding. _'And why did you insist on taking that telepathy potion without really bothering to test it? I still don't like this.'_

  Severus smirked, forgetting where they were for the moment as Dumbledore introduced Padma Patil's accomplishments to the gathered crowd. _'You don't like it because you can't gripe about me even in your head. All five months of it,'_ he gloated.

  _'Bugger off, Sev.'_

  The potions master chuckled quite evilly internally. Who knew that it was this easy to tease his partner? Of course, he'd never admit that he hadn't meant to really drink the potion - that had been an accident. The only good thing about it was that he'd seen Harry first, and not Black, who had been following him.

  That would have been *bad.*

  The fallout from that had been one of those things that Severus and Harry had been avoiding to do while patching up their relationship. It had taken a couple of months past that for them to realize that it was fine and stable and all manner of things that Harry's friend Granger had so _kindly_ pointed out.

  _'Stop thinking about Hermione with that sneer in your voice,'_ Harry interrupted his thinking.

  Severus silently cursed. Harry may not have been able to really think to himself, he had mastered the problem of the potion to the point where only exceptionally loud random thoughts could be heard by Harry. Well, unless it was deliberate.

  Not dignifying that with an answer, Severus glared at the back of Dumbledore's head as he extolled the virtues of Harry Potter to the crowd. The idiots were hanging by their seats to the story the headmaster was weaving, and their gaping jaws and glazed look to their eyes made Severus want to retreat to his cauldron.

  _'How about the bedroom?'_

  Shit. Severus hadn't meant to broadcast that last thought. Harry knew how to turn anything into a come-on. Well, anything Severus said.

  _'Nine-thirty?'_ Harry continued in spite of Severus' silence. _'That gives us a half hour to shake off the "imbeciles" as you put it to the headmaster.'_

  Severus leveled a glance at Harry. There was a lascivious glint to the mischievous look on his face, despite the two of them being seated in front of five hundred witches and wizards who had come to watch the prestigious 'graduation' ceremony that Hogwarts presented each year.

  Well, he may be doomed to spend the rest of this life with Harry - the rest of eternity from what he'd gathered, thanks to the spectacular bonding they'd accidentally performed in the dungeons when Harry had escaped - but it didn't look like they wouldn't have a boring relationship. Or a sexless one, either.

  The best of it all, though, was the interesting looks he could get from Black whenever he got close to Harry.

  Yes, he'd make it work in his favor.

  Definitely.

Fin.

AN: Please don't ask for a sequel. There won't be one. As much as I love sequels, I really can't see one coming from this story. Reactions from everyone (excepting Sirius, whom I think you can guess what his is) is kind of pointless as far as the story goes. Repeating what I said at the beginning – I hope that you liked reading this story. I honestly didn't expect more than a handful of reviews when I put this up, so all of the lovely things you've said have surprised me. Thank you very much:

Otaku freak, Phoenix353, CastusAlbusCor, Felion, anonymous, Bianca, bookwrm580, AlphaBeta, sen, Rebecca Cecilie, Tash, Artemis-chan, candy-thedreamer, Bianca, Lexi-formerly Katy999, Hanaus, nan-chan, Misty DevilChild, Angel, Harmoni, Sarah, della luna, ShadowHunter, Rhiain, Savi2070, Nagini: c r i m s o n, GoldenRose, slytherin-cool, Endless-luv, silv3rang3l, White Rider, amythest, Lady Russell Holmes, Death, Acyla, Felion, Darragh Tieraneux, owlchik41, Ice Lupus, Silver Angel, Jewelclaw Lady of Wind, zeynel, athenakitty, smoofie, smilez, spacecatdet, Rowaine GJB, Werewindle, Cettia cetti, athenakitty, Kateri, mp, The Red Dragons Order

I apologize if I've missed anyone. I finished this as soon as I got home from work, and there was a nasty customer who absolutely wanted his money back 'cause he thought The Matrix Reloaded 'sucked.' I'm grumpy, and all I want is to curl up in front of the TV and watch The New Detectives with my butter pecan ice cream and my cats fighting over who gets to lick the bowl clean (when they both know it'll be the dog).


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